How scammers stole Seth Green’s Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT and converted it into cash

During the pandemic, strange digital images of cartoon monkeys called “Bored Apes” have become the latest way to gather both crypto-credibility and some celebrities.

Bored Ape Yacht Club is one of the most valuable and successful collections of crypto-non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to date, with some selling for over $ 2 million dollars. A number of the digital monkeys have ended up in the crypto wallets of celebrities such as Jimmy Fallon, Paris Hilton, Steve Aoki and actor Seth Green.

In May, Green came with news when he announced that he had lost possession of his precious BAYC original (# 8,398 out of 0f 10,000 totally unique digital assets in the collection), along with three other valuable NFTs: two mutant tapes and a doodle .

All of these popular NFT collections are located on the Ethereum blockchain, the second most valuable crypto ecosystem behind Bitcoin and the birthplace of NFTs. Transactions on Ethereum can be done anonymously, but all transactions are also transparent for all to see. That’s how Green was able to determine that BAYC # 8398 had ended up in the wallet of someone who went after DarkWing84, who actually appears to be a Sydney-based cinematographer. (Hat tips to PJ Vogt and Crypto Island for doing 99 percent of the work of connecting the handle to an actual human being.)

This is also how we know that Green has finally bought the monkey NFT he calls “Peace” back for more than what DarkWing84 paid the thief for on June 7.

Bored Ape and two mutant monkeys now live in a wallet marked “Fred_Simian” on OpenSea. Green reportedly has plans to develop a show with some of his NFTs as characters, which may be why he was willing to pay for the stolen essentials.

Much of the focus in the case of Seth Green’s monkey has been on the journey to the NFT itself across different tracks in a distributed public ledger and who controls the keys to these movements. Meanwhile, the flow of fungible tokens that can be more easily exchanged for actual fiat money and used in the non-digital realm has been more opaque.

Green has said he was tricked by a phishing scam that was a clone of Boys Cat Gang, another moderately successful NFT collection.

Now, blockchain investigator @ZachXBT has tracked the pitch of the approximately 106 ETHs (worth $ 121,000 as of July 11) that went from DarkWing84’s wallet to the scammer’s possession in exchange for the stolen monkey, which the thief only kept in custody for less than two and a half hours before reselling.

In a Twitter thread, the pseudonymous scout tells how after Green linked his Ethereum wallet to the phishing scam site, he apparently clicked on something that then gave the scammer permission to transmit Green’s most valuable NFTs.

“I’m insanely careful about separate wallets and security, but I got it anyway,” Green said on Twitter on May 17 after the digital goods were robbed.

Within minutes of the sale of the stolen Monkeys and Doodle, the thief began a series of crypto transactions in an attempt to launder the funds. All four stolen NFTs raised over $ 400,000 in ETH, which was then exchanged for an Ethereum ERC-20 token called renBTC to facilitate the transfer of revenue to Bitcoin.

“The scammer then uses a technique called peel chain where they launder large amounts of crypto through small transactions,” explains ZachXBT.

After ten layers of transactions to try to launder the money further, a large part is moved back from ETH to Bitcoin and eventually exchanged for $ 107,000 worth of Tether stablecoin.

“Then the funds will be dormant for 41 days before I receive a notification that they are on the move again,” the thread continues. “On June 21, the fraudster will start transferring stolen funds to @WhiteBit (a European crypto exchange). I send them the DM immediately, but unfortunately it does not seem to be considered internally. “

A centralized exchange such as WhiteBit or Coinbase acts as a crypto-on and off-ramp where the digital tokens can be exchanged for dollars, euros or another fiat currency and then more easily disappear into circulation.

ZachXBT believes the perpetrator has defrauded and laundered millions of dollars in a similar way.

“While Seth Green is the victim in this example, many other people have lost money to the same scammer. Hopefully, they will miss out at some point.”

If you have tips on sketchy activity on the blockchain, turn me on @ericcmack[email protected] or my colleagues @journodao.