Yet another Bored Ape scam has cost an investor big time – this time resulting in over half a million dollars in losses. For some, these scams are just “part and parcel” of web3, crypto, and NFTs. There are always going to be some bad apples, they say.
But others claim that these rampant scams are clear evidence that the entire NFT world (and by extension, the crypto world) isn’t quite as secure as we previously thought. One thing’s for sure: this isn’t the first Bored Ape scam, and it probably won’t be the last.
How Did This Investor Lose $567,000?
The investor was apparently duped by a deceptively simple scheme: The fraudster simply used .png files and presented them as genuine NFTs. This scammer reportedly pasted a checkmark onto the .png files in order to fool investors that they were real. At least one person fell for it, losing multiple NFTs. Among his lost tokens were a rare “bubble gum ape” and two Mutant Apes.
The entire scam took place thanks to an exchange called “Swapkiwi,” which allows investors to swap NFTs with lower transaction fees. The bubble gum ape was apparently one of the most rare Bored Ape NFTs on the market today, ranking near the top 10% of all 10,000 variants.
Swapkiwi immediately announced that it was planning to make improvements to its platform, but these improvements will obviously come far too late for the investor who lost more than half a million dollars. It is unknown whether Swapkiwi will lose its reputation in the crypto world, due to this scam.
This Isn’t the First Time That a Bored Ape Investor Has Been Scammed
Of course, there have been many other Bored Ape scams over the years, and some have been much worse than the one detailed above. On February 1, 2022, an investor lost $2.7 million in Bored Ape NFTs and derivatives. The hacker apparently tricked the investor into signing fake transactions with his wallet ID, compromising his security and allowing all of his NFTs to be transferred out of his control. But the entire scam was much more elaborate than that, as the hacker first took control of a Discord server and faked a raffle for an “extra mint” of another NFT collection called Moschi Mochi.
On December 30, 2021, another Bored Ape collector lost $2.2 million in a phishing scam. 16 NFTs were stolen from this investor’s wallet, including both Bored Apes and Mutant Apes. Once again, the collector was hacked after clicking on a fake NFT dApp link.
Even the new ApeCoin is not safe from scams. On April 1, 2022, it was reported that the coin had plummeted 8% after the Bored Ape Yacht Club Discord channel suffered a phishing scam. Hackers were apparently using the compromised official Discord channel to promote fake minting. This has obviously been a common – and successful tactic for hackers looking to target Bored Ape investors.
