The popular on-chain sleuth ZachXBT recently called out two growing Twitter accounts for perpetrating multiple NFT-related scams over the past month.
The analyst explained the timeline of events on Friday, including their sudden rise to prominence and the rug pulls they’ve managed to pull off.
Calling Out the Scammers
As outlined in the analyst’s Twitter thread on Friday, Twitter handles @radako and @Fitz_lol suddenly began using NFT profile pictures and tweeting about NFTs at the end of last month.
Though both accounts appear to have joined Twitter years ago, their follower accounts skyrocketed by tens of thousands within the following weeks. Radako, for example, grew his follower count from 2,806 to 47,021 between December 18 and December 26, while Mr. Fit’s followers grew from 6,496 to 32,793 between January 3 and January 11.
ZachXBT believes these accounts were either sold or stolen, explaining the sudden turn of events.
“Shortly after they began making cringe Tweets botting the engagement and promoting 6+ rug projects they create,” he said. For example, the accounts would make tweets provoking people to follow or reply while replying to the other account’s tweets encourages users to follow @FatNutzETH for a “free mint.”
The analyst said that we can verify these two accounts as having created the projects using on-chain data. The Ethereum address associated with Radako’s profile picture is only “one hop away” from the deployer Ethereum contract address connected to Fitz’s NFT rug. The latter is also closely connected to public wallets used by @TrippyFrogsNFT and @FatNutzETH.
“In total these projects the scammer created netted them ~40 ETH in the span of a few weeks,” he continued. That’s worth roughly $64,000 at writing time.
Numerous Twitter users have called attention to projects promoted by Radako and Fitz as being scams, after being rug-pulled themselves. ZachXBT warned followers not to follow, tweet, or reply to “random NFT accounts” simply because they have a high follower count.
The Most Common Scams
In July 2022, Chainalysis researcher Kim Grauer warned that classic investment scams promising unrealistic returns are still the most common and profitable in the industry.
However, more sophisticated scams – including romance and business/ government imposter scams – netted thieves over $300 million between January 2021 and March 2022. Thankfully, crypto scams appeared to have quieted down as the bear market set into place.
NFT scams often take place after an influential and trusted social media page is compromised. For example, several Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs have been stolen following a hack of the group’s Instagram in April, and another of its Discord in June.
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