Unknown BAYC NFT owner “s27” recently lost around $570,000 in NFTs. This was after he swapped his BAYC NFT and two Mutant Ape Yacht Club (MAYC) tokens for counterfeit NFTs that were cleverly disguised as real.
A “bubble gum ape” was among the NFTs that went missing. The user claimed to have completed the swap via the “Swap.Kiwi” NFT exchange platform. It allows for direct NFT exchanges between collectors while lowering transaction fees.
Thanks to his Discord channel programmed to watch BAYC and MAYC listings that are at least 5% below their floor price in Ether, crypto enthusiast “quit” (@0xQuit on Twitter) detected the likely fraudulent transaction first.
s27 adds to the victim’s list of the latest BAYC scam
“The pings are rare, but when they happen it generally means one of two things: somebody is panic selling, or somebody is compromised. When I saw the notification for #1584, I instantly knew it was the latter.”
@0xQuit tweet
Quit found that not only did the deceived user transfer his expensive NFTs to a fraudster, but he was also the one who initiated the exchange, as he revealed in a Twitter thread.
Quit then tracked down the scammer’s NFTs, which s27 had gotten following the trade. They all seemed to be authentic BAYC tokens, but they weren’t.
Kiwi uses a “green checkmark” to ensure that tokens are genuine.
However, the way the checkmark appears on the UI can be readily faked using a basic image editor, which is precisely what the fraudster did.
The scammer essentially downloaded several “jpegs” displaying a few high-priced BAYC apes and applied a false watermark to make them look legitimate when posted on Swap. Kiwi.
Shortly after receiving them, the fraudster sold the BAYC and two MAYC NFTs for 98.85 ETH, 23 ETH, and 25.25 ETH, totaling $521,000. Quit said these postings were lower than their respective floor pricing, putting s27’s potential loss at $570,000.
Meanwhile, holders of NFTs appear to be becoming a prominent target for fraudsters of all kinds, who, in turn, continue to come up with increasingly imaginative strategies for their schemes.