Despite Yuga Labs’ ‘Otherdeeds’ Land sale already causing enough friction within the space, scammers have taken it upon themselves to cause even more carnage by luring unsuspecting users to a phishing site which posed as the mint page for exclusive plots of Otherside Land.
According to notorious on-chain detective ‘zachxbt,’ there were three scammer wallets tied to the fraud, with each robbing $1.03 million, $3.58 million, and $1.63 million worth of NFTs respectively (totalling a loss of around $6.2 million). The most notable NFTs from the unfortunate compilation of stolen assets include five Bored Apes, six Mutant Apes, nine Azukis, two WoWs, and over 30 plots of Land in The Sandbox.
Further investigation from zachxbt also found that the three wallets were interlinked, as many of the NFTs listed above were transferred from the initial scam wallet to the second one, and then onto the third.
In addition, the fact that zachxbt got momentarily restricted on Twitter further infers that the phishing scam was a collusive effort, as a single guilty party wouldn’t have been able to suspend a Twitter account all on their own.
As ever, the key takeaway from this story is to always do your due diligence before clicking on unofficial or suspicious links. While we still have a disproportional dynamic between NFT hype and security, NFT popularity and scams are always going to rise in tandem, meaning it is extra important to stay vigilant when landmark mints take place.
