US-based NFT artist Josh M. Chavez, who created collectibles for Tiger Woods, Tom Brady and Rafael Nadal, fell victim to blatant fraud
Josh Chavez took to Twitter to share the sad story of a dangerous scam he was targeted with. The crook used the old technique of using infected files in documents attached to his email messages.
NFT artists fooled by bad guys on Instagram
On January 19, 2022, American digital artist Josh M. Chavez announced that scammers had stolen all tokens and NFTs from his on-chain crypto wallet MetaMask.
Today my MetaMask is empty and all my NFTs sold in minutes.
I live on the internet and can spot scams a mile away, so I never thought this would happen to me, but today I’m going to reiterate one small detail. Forgot to check: 🧵 pic.twitter.com/HwkIW14mTT
— ⊕ Josh Chavez (@tropicalratchet) January 19, 2023
The artist revealed that he was contacted by a potential client via direct message on Instagram. I decided to.
A stranger has ordered cover art for a song that will be released soon. All these details were sent to Chavez by email.
The scammer sent the document using the name “Oscar Davis”. One of them he had was labeled .pdf but actually had a .exe filename extension. EXE files are designed to run computer programs when opened.
As soon as the file was opened it bound to Chrome and integrated the browser’s MetaMask wallet. In the blink of an eye he had his tokens drained from MetaMask and all his NFTs sold at auction for a fraction of their actual price.
Sophisticated NFT segment scam under fire
Chavez emphasizes that the entire social engineering procedure was well crafted.
I live on the internet and can spot scams a mile away but today I forgot to double check one small detail (…) just in a hurry No, this was routine.Finally with the client
As previously covered by U.Today, prominent actors in the NFT market were targeted in sophisticated fraud campaigns from Q4 2022 to Q1 2023. Phishing link.
Scammers amid euphoria over FIFA World Cup in Qatar managed Pass Twitter’s security check and advertise a fake Binance x Cristiano Ronaldo NFT airdrop.
