• Brooklyn District Attorney advises artists about fake NFT platforms and scams.
  • Scammers steal digital assets by imitating reputable NFT websites.

As a seasoned analyst with extensive experience in the digital art market, I’ve witnessed the meteoric rise of NFTs and their accompanying challenges firsthand. The recent case of the 85-year-old artist in Brooklyn serves as a stark reminder of the dangers lurking within this dynamic landscape.

The District Attorney’s office in Brooklyn is intensifying its actions against fraudulent Non-Fungible Token (NFT) operations, following the disheartening incident of an 85-year-old artist who lost his life savings to a scam. Eager to participate in the burgeoning NFT market, the artist unfortunately became a victim of a deceptive NFT platform that fraudulently mimicked OpenSea, one of the world’s most prominent NFT marketplaces.

They persuaded the artist to emboss his work onto the website. They assured him that the revenues would exceed $300,000 in sales. The scammers informed him it would require a fee of $135,000 to repay him. In an extraordinary action, the artist withdrew money from his retirement accounts, he charged up all the credit cards possible, he borrowed additional money to cover the fee.

NFT Scam Reveals Dangers in Digital Art Market

In a statement, Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez revealed that the recent scam they’re investigating is not an isolated incident. During their investigation, they discovered 40 fraudulent websites of a similar nature, which mimic artists and trick them with the same scam method. Once they gain access to these sites, hackers then steal digital assets and money from their victims.

During their investigation, they found out that the stolen money was converted to Nigerian Naira by criminals, making it difficult to recover the funds. As part of their probe, they uncovered that these criminals operated and financed fraudulent websites from Nigeria. Moreover, they traced two additional victims, artists residing in Georgia and California, who were defrauded through this scheme.

In order to prevent potential scams, the District Attorney’s Office took down the suspicious phishing sites and advised NFT creators to avoid unverified sites and never share the keys or seed phrases of their digital wallets to protect their crypto assets.

It appears as though there was a warning from the FBI in 2023, suggesting that numerous cybercriminals disguised themselves as legitimate NFT developers and took advantage of system weaknesses to deceive their victims.

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2024-12-10 12:55