1/ A quick update on MontanaBlack who in actual fact seems to have >20 million followers on all kinds of platforms. The story shows how many of these scam rings operate. There is always someone in the background doing the "dirty" work functioning as the intermediary and fall guy.
2/ In MontanaBlack's case that is the below person with >150k followers on Twitter. This whole thread is courtesy to @shinraton who reported this in German. He also shared the DM's of this person who is looking for projects that he and MontanaBlack can invest in (see screenshots)
3/ They are not interested in the content on the NFT project (as exemplified yesterday where MontanaBlack promoted a project that included a Swastika), but only by money/whitelist spots. If they don't get what they want, they start to publicly call legitimate projects a "scam".
4/ They use the influence that they have as leverage to get what they want. If you don't agree they will use their influence to make sure your project doesn't succeed. When Ayroeth sold his Bored Ape, he continued to use it, until he was called out. His bio still mentions BAYC.
5/ In a private deal outside OS, he apparently scammed someone for 17ETH by not transferring his Doodle. There are many extensive threads (mainly in German) about all the fake giveaways as well, e.g.
6/ Even though the blockchain provides transparency, these people use the fact that their relationships IRL are not transparent and obvious. And so you are often deceived by a web of people that are IRL all (inter)connected and centralized.
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1/ This is a thread about Jeffrey Epstein and 13 ways he was connected to an interrelated network of people that created the foundations of today’s crypto space. This could indicate that the crypto ecosystem after 2013 (or even earlier) was part of an intelligence operation. 🧵
2/ In 2017 Epstein shared his thoughts on Bitcoin and a WSJ source mentioned that he “claimed to work for the U.S. Treasury Department on cryptocurrency”. We decided to analyze Epstein’s crypto connections, in light of and taking into account his criminal/financial “track record"
3/ In the 1980s, Epstein was involved in one of the largest Ponzi schemes: Towers Financial. Its CEO, Steve Hoffenberg was jailed for 20 years while Epstein escaped justice. They were introduced via a British arms dealer, Douglas Leese (son Nick is listed in Epstein's black book)
1/ This is a thread about the largest money-laundering casino on US soil that ever existed and its deep connections to Bitfinex/Tether, FTX, Donald Trump, US elections, Russia, Wirecard, intelligence agencies & the most powerful/dangerous gangster in the world: Semion Mogilevich.
2/ In 2014 the largest Bitcoin exchange at the time, Mt Gox, went bankrupt after having lost 744,408 Bitcoin in a theft by 2 Russians. Alexander Vinnik pleaded guilty to laundering $9bn. His exchange BTC-e (WEX) is now controlled by Konstantin Malofeev/Russian security agency FSB
3/ Vinnik has ties to FSB-linked Semion Mogilevich, “the boss of all bosses” of the Russian mafia, whose crime organization has immense global power/reach & is connected to intelligence agencies/politicians around the world. He made alliances with Italian, Chinese & Japanese OCGs
1/ Today @0xFoobar launched a new universal name service, which might be an appropriate occasion to dox him using his universal ENS name that he once registered via an alt wallet. His role as dev allowed him to extract money from DeFi/NFT projects in often hidden ways.
2/ We have previously mentioned his role in RevestFinance, where he did a bit of work, and then left the project by dumping $720,000 USD worth of coins to his anon wallet. That seemed to be part of his modus operandi and way of working; he did exactly the same at another project.
3/ More recently he came in the news because he made a wrapper for FriendsTech, but didn’t disclose that he added a 2.5% fee. And he allegedly got $13k for an audit of MangoFarm which turned out to be a rug. He generally deletes his tweets and blocks everyone with any criticism.
1/ Dear @OpenSea, what do you think of the fact that your Head of Ventures, Kevin Pawlak, has been involved in various very dubious business dealings (e.g. Anubis) and pump & dump schemes under his pseudonymous identity @0xSisyphus (& 0xMagellan)?
2/ He also tried to influence decisions at OpenSea using his account without disclosing that he was an actual employee who would benefit from those decisions. Were you aware of this and do you approve of this behavior and these obvious conflicts of interest?
3/ When he was dealing with Alameda Research and telling them to buy Anubis ($ANKH), was that in a private or professional capacity? Was OpenSea ever involved in any of his “side projects”? How do you regulate potential conflicts of interest and insider trading of your employees?
1/ In Oct 2021 the famous Anubis rug took place where an attacker was able to transfer $60m of ETH to a wallet, using Tornado cash to siphon off the funds. We provide an alternative theory of what happened: a premeditated rug by Sisyphus&Co with money being laundered via $PEPE.🧵
2/ The day before the Anubis rug Sisyphus AKA OpenSea’s Kevin Pawlak hyped the project in Discord & someone recorded it. He mentions he bought $420k and would buy more the next day, and that the worst case scenario is that everyone gets their money back if things don’t work out.
3/ Sisyphus writes the project is in safe hands and “cannot rug”. At that time all funds are in the hands of 1 person, Beerus (Ethan Cheung), who was fully doxxed at the time, a 19 year old kid, son of Mike Cheung Shun Ching, a prominent figure in the Hong Kong horse racing scene
1/ A while back we did a quick investigation to see who @0xSisyphus was and we came to the conclusion that it’s Kevin Pawlak, the head of OpenSea Ventures. The timestamps on the pawlak.eth and sisyphus.eth addresses perfectly match (see next tweets).
2/ Here you can see that they both minted Zorbs (ZORB) within 1 minute of each other. They also minted sismo.eth DAO (SDAO) within 10 minutes of each other, but that was the 1st time Pawlak.eth became active again after 16 days (and his only action for another 21 days)
3/ Also the following timestamps perfectly match up, and given the very limited activity of pawlak.eth, we have now accounted for most of their actions that are perfectly in line with sisyphus.eth.