How French Police Nabbed NFT Scammers With Crypto Researcher's Help

At least five individuals have been arrested in France on Wednesday for allegedly stealing $2.5 million of valuable Bored Ape Yacht Collection nonfungible tokens. 

BAYC NFTs are a collection of 10,000 unique apes living on the Ethereum ETH/USD blockchain.

See Also: How To Buy Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) NFTs

What Happened: According to Agence France Presse, France's OCLCTIC cyber-crime authority received the tip-off from a Twitter user "ZachXBT", who posted their own investigation online. 

ZachXBT is an independent crypto sleuth, who was following up on complaints from "the community of owners of the Bored Ape Yacht Club series of limited edition monkeys", a French cybercrime official was quoted as saying.

Update: Am very pleased to shared that both Mathys and Camille were prosecuted in France as of today.

Will attach the press release and my article below. https://t.co/Ed5uFnqLAN pic.twitter.com/BNRAaKiJ3i

— ZachXBT (@zachxbt) October 12, 2022

The five accused have reportedly been charged with fraud and criminal association, with prosecutors saying they were a part of a criminal gang that stole BAYC NFTs between late 2021 and early 2022. 

See More: How To Buy Non Fungible Tokens (NFTs)

How They Did It: The alleged fraudsters set up a fake website that offered to animate any static NFT and phished credentials of crypto wallets of the unsolicited individuals, which then gave the criminal gang access to all digital assets owned by individuals, AFP reported.

What’s The Catch: ZachXBT said on Twitter that an important part of the research includes the use of Tornado Cash TORN/USD by scammers to mix and withdraw the funds. 

“They [scammers] were not careful about covering their tracks when it came to withdrawing the funds from Tornado,” the researcher said. 

It should be noted that the U.S. made the use of Tornado cash mixer illegal, citing criminal activity and crypto laundering activities.

The NFT sphere has been on a roller coaster ride since 2021 when it witnessed a massive spike in prices, accounting for some $2.8 billion in sales last year. It has declined only slightly in the first half of this year, according to analyst firm NonFungible. ‘Bored Apes’ are among the most expensive and best-known NFTs. 

Price Action: The price floor of BAYC is up 7.86% in the last 24 hours. The seven-day average sale price is 85.726 ETH ETH/USD, as per data received from NFT price floor.