In the early hours of April Fool’s Day, scammers targeted the Discord servers of popular None Fungible Token (NFT) projects, including the Bored Ape Yacht Club.
Citing Motherboard, Engadget reported that some users have lost money to malicious actors who hacked the projects’ bots and posted fake offers with links to their phishing websites.
One of the phishing posts by a compromised Bored Ape bot reads “Oh no, our dogs are mutating. MAKC can be staked for our $APE token. Holders of MAYC + BAYC will be able to claim exclusive rewards just by simply minting and holding our mutant dogs,”
If a user clicks on the link in the post, they will be directed to a website where they will be duped into minting a false NFT in return for Ethereum.
Other versions deceive victims into sending the scammers NFTs by making them believe their item would be packaged.
The hacks were linked to two wallet addresses, one of which sold a stolen Mutant Ape Yacht Club NFT and then sent the other 19.85 ETH, which is around $69,000 at current exchange rates.
According to reports, the he recipient wallet reportedly sent 61 ETH ($213,000) to a mixing service, which can hide the origin and trail of potentially identifiable crypto currency.
It’s unclear how many people were duped, but the projects’ administrators were quick to notice and issued a warning to their followers.