A YouTuber named Coffeezilla, who investigates online scams, has unearthed an alleged plot by non-fungible token (NFT) scammers to make $20 million from dubious projects.
In a video published on February 16, 2022, Coffeezilla explains how scammers attempted to use the Squiggles NFT project to defraud unsuspecting investors.
Earlier, the project received a lot of hype. It is also alleged to have attracted several shadow wallets that engaged in pumping the volume. Although OpenSea listed the project previously, they later removed it. Squiggles, however, have promised to follow up with OpenSea.
According to the YouTuber, he discovered the scammers as a series of fake wallets created by one person buying Squiggles translating to fake millions of dollars worth of fake volume, while listed on OpenSea. OpenSea then flipped the purchased Squiggles for less money.
Selling 800 ETH worth of Squiggles at a loss
Several hundred new wallets were created as a result of an account spending 800 ETH across two transactions. To Coffeezilla, the logic behind buying Squiggles and selling them at a loss is not clear. He noted that the aim was to give an illusion of huge interest to get people to buy in and then abandon the project.
An alleged founder of Squiggles isn’t the real founder of the project, which raised suspicion just before it launched. According to the claim, the founder was working for a behind-the-scenes group that has carried out several scams before.
It has later become clear that the suspects are Gabe, Gavin, Ali, and a high school student. In an interesting turn of events, the individual suspected of acting as a puppet for the fraudsters denied the allegations in a video.
“Some weird accusations, not sure where they come from. Exactly. I have no bad intentions. I would never hurt anyone physically, financially, or mentally. It’s not in me. I’m all about my morals,” he says.
Coffeezilla reports that the project founders are utilizing verified Twitter accounts to manipulate social media to discredit the source of the dossier. As users enquired more about the dossier, Squiggles’ Discord channel was quickly shut down.
