NFT developers stole $1.3 million from investors before going missing.

Victims of the NFT fraud are attempting to reclaim stolen cash and relaunch the project without the original developers.

After investors spent $1.3 million into the cartoon ice cream digital collectibles, the creators of a non-fungible token (NFT) collection entitled Frosties vanished.

Frosties might have been the first NFT “rug pull” of 2022, when developers depart a project after diverting investor cash and destroying liquidity. According to ItsBlockchain, around $30 million was stolen in such frauds from September through October of last year.

In the instance of Frosties, the mysterious developers gathered funds and vanished after investors acquired all 8,888 NFTs via OpenSea on Jan. 9, getting away with about $1.3 million in ethereum.

At the time, the NFTs had an average base rate of 0.04 ether, or $121 in ETH. Approximately 43 minutes after the release, all 8,888 NFTs were sold out.

Shortly after, the project’s developers took down their Twitter, Discord, and all other avenues of contact. The developer’s wallet address was deleted from the collection’s OpenSea main page.  According to Etherscan, the majority of the money have subsequently been moved out of the original wallet.

Antique_Taco, one of the victims, said in a direct message on Twitter:

“I went to eat dinner and when I came back I saw that one Frostie was revealed on OpenSea. I was really confused so I typed a message in the Discord about it and as soon as I hit send the Discord disappeared…My heart sank.”

On January 9, the original holders of the NFTs formed a new Discord channel dedicated to “unrugging the Frosties.”

The organization is now working on a project contract that would refund stolen cash to their legitimate NFT owners.

 Mike Fasanello, the director of training and regulatory affairs at Blockchain Intelligence Group, said in an interview:

“Even though [they] got scammed with the first phase of the project, they want to keep the project alive. A big passion is still there in this community, which is fantastic.” 

Fasanello, who has been examining the rug pull, discovered the possible fraud when reading an NFT subreddit and came across victim complaints. Fasanello’s team sent Blockworks an analysis and graph of the stolen payments.

On January 11, Fasanello began working with one of the project’s new Discord moderators. Fasanello, who did not reveal the moderator’s identity, stated that the two may submit a report with law authorities in the near future.

However, as Fasanello revealed himself in the chatroom, he was kicked out, leading him to conclude that there were “foxes in the henhouse.”

Join CoinCu Telegram to keep track of news: https://t.me/coincunews

Follow CoinCu Youtube Channel | Follow CoinCu Facebook page

Patrick

Coincu News