Rug Pull Detective Zachxbt Exposes An NFT Scam Ring Who Stole $3.9M

One of the best on-chain analysts in the NFT space, zachxbt, posted a thread on Twitter about an active NFT scam ring. Notably, the group has 1355 ETH sitting in their main wallets, nearly $4 million as of the time of writing. Not only that, but that number doesn’t include the amount that these particular people in the NFT scam ring have already cashed out.

On-chain analysis points to several NFT scam rings behind major Discord hacks

In short, zachxbt decided to shine some light behind one of the groups pulling off some of the recent Discord hacks.

In particular, zachxbt broke down the hack of Zeneca’s 333 Club over this past weekend. That hack saw 110 ETH worth of NFTs stolen by this particular group.  Through two infographics (including the one above) the analyst made a connection between this scam and previous Discord hacks.

Like the majority of  NFT Discord scams, the scam ring operates by posting fake mint links in NFT Discords, stealing valuable NFTs to sell quickly, and then transferring the funds through several wallets on their way to a main wallet. Alarmingly, zachxbt estimates that this particular scam group has made 8 figures by stealing NFTs this way.

Could one group of scammers be behind all NFT Discord hacks?

In the first and last tweets in the thread, zachxbt alludes to an alarming conclusion. That is to say, most, if not all hacks of NFT Discords are carried out by just a few different groups. If that isn’t bad enough, the analyst goes on to say that “all of these people originate from forum websites”. Seeming to imply that they are in communication and that they compete against each other to hack Discord servers.

The idea of a connected NFT scam ring making a game out of scamming people out of millions certainly adds insult to injury. Indeed, the number of Discord hacks has gotten out of control in recent months. Sadly, it’s usually the individual NFT owners who bear the brunt of these attacks.

Of course, Discord hacks aren’t the only scams that NFT owners have to look out for. Although the vast majority of scams today have the same ultimate goal. Namely, getting people to click on phishing links or sign transactions on fake minting sites. One of the newest scam trends doing this involved people using stolen verified Twitter accounts to get people to click on phishing links.

And just earlier today, a scammer was able to hack the BAYC Instagram. In this instance, a scammer also used a fake airdrop site to get people. Those who fell for the scam ended up signing transactions that transferred their NFTs to the scammer. That attack alone was bad enough to steal around $3 million worth of NFTs.

To read through zachxbt’s analysis, check out the original Twitter thread here.