🚨 The Fake Ledger That Stole Everything

(1/8)
James* thought he was safe. He used a Ledger hardware wallet, kept his 24 words private, and followed every crypto security tip out there.

Then one day… a package arrived.
🧵👇 (2/8)

✅ It looked legit.
✅The box had the Ledger logo.
✅The device looked real.

Even the letter inside seemed official, explaining this was a “replacement device” after a security breach.

But James had no idea:
🤯 This was the beginning of a sophisticated scam.

Hey @Izadi - this long overdue thread is dedicated to you 🖤

Manipulation, fraud, scams, rugs, pump and dump schemes. Izadi uses his influence to manipulate communities and seek power and control before a liquidity exit.

Let’s begin🧵 1/ @Izadi has made $1,499,248.66 from the 5 eth NFT projects he launched that have since rugged. He has also made a sizable amount of money promoting projects that have rugged.

Unraveling this network activity is quite difficult, but let’s break it down for you.

@blocksearch

. @GooniezNFT

8 months of pretending to build is long enough... it's clear @MoonbodyMoe has no intention of doing right by the holders🧵 2/The project has earned well over $6M to date, ~1425ETH from mint, and another 410ETH in royalties. Here's a glimpse into the funds courtesy of @blocksearch

. @SoulBulbs

.@OgamiConquest

.@FuryofTheFurNFT

. @JoinAlienverse

This is absolutely a slow rug. Interestingly enough, the day the community reached out to us just so happened to be the first time @LexEther_ came online in over a month.. After disappearing and a severe lack of communication, his return came with announcements, shifting the roadmap "to align with the market".

. @theparrotboss

If you see the below image, DO NOT CLICK THE LINK - IT IS A SCAM 🚨

With the help of @nft_dreww, we have been tracking a network of large @discord hacks that have taken place with increasing frequency throughout 2022 🧵 2/Projects do not do stealth mints - yet this hacker feeds on FOMO to scam 1000s of people out of all of their assets. Let's dive deeper into exactly how this is done:

You may have noticed that we haven't posted a legitimacy ranking in about 5 days 🧵 2/Over the last 3 months, we've been listening to all feedback on our ratings to design a model that makes sense for the entire NFT space, giving leigitimate projects a chance to be heard and helping you avoid the obvious cashgrab, rug pull attempts.

. @InvsbleFriends

At the beginning of May 2021, @XposeProtocol token launched, swindling nearly 20,000 people out of over $125 million USD. @VascoRouw and Joshua Kaats were key in advising the project and creating massive social media hype 🧵bnr.nl/nieuws/financi… 2/Early on, @VascoRouw was announced as a key advisor to the project.

. @PharaGods at it again. For context, all mint funds made their way to Binance.

This mint, the founders created 2 brand new wallets (funded with 100s of ETH from Binance) to manipulate the floor price of their second collection so they can mint it at a higher price...

https://twitter.com/rugpullfinder/status/1525105590195965952

Those 2 wallets currently own 583 NFTs or about 15.79% of the entire collection...

We are happy to announce that this weekend, we will be rolling out our v3 legitimacy audit scoring! In mid-January, we launched v2 scoring, which expanded our previous framework and removed subjective bias from it 🧵 2/With our new scoring system, we have removed even more subjectivity, ensuring that our scores are even more data-driven. It’s impossible to remove all levels of subjectivity, but v3 is 90%+ data-driven, vs 70% in v2.

In honor of @cryptoShields: It's been nearly a month since we called out #RugPullMafia, although we have reported individual projects we caught as it happened. These scammers have now stolen over 1400ETH from our pockets since December 🧵

https://twitter.com/rugpullfinder/status/1505005618129682433

2/The full extent of this network is quite sickening as you can see by this @blocksearch graph - Thus far, there have been over 75 confirmed rug pulls by this group

. @Crypto_Bull_NFT - new founders, who were original holders of the project, came in to save the community as the writing was on the wall.

They have done a phenomenal job of turning the project around and start delivering value to their community. 2/People like @cgrigori @fwithdoc @mydrover21 and @floki_musk within the NFT space deserve to be highlighted way more than the scammers who decimate our space and make mass adoption difficult.

Over the past three months we've been tracking and investigating a group of #NFT projects which were brought to our attention after collectively making over 40,000ETH from their communities, not including royalties, rinsing and repeating the strategy across multiple projects 🧵 2/This is the first part of our investigation, an extension of the work done by @RugBustersCO - For reference, and to learn more about the parties involved and Discord activity- please take a moment to read this medium article -
medium.com/@kryptiloid/va…

We are often reviewing/auditing/investigating hundreds of projects at a time- recently @WomenUniteNFT and the entire Women Unite Kingdom came to our attention as we began hearing stories from their community about how it turned from a positive experience to all about money🧵

https://twitter.com/rugpullfinder/status/1510984722758909954

2/At first glance and looking at their Discord server and website, they appear to be all about positive vibes, the Power of Attraction and manifestation. Let's dive deeper into the project so you can understand why we have warned everyone about it.

As stated previously, We do not believe @tmntnft owns the rights to the IP they claim to own, and unless they can get cooperation from Viacom for the release of their collection, it will absolutely be a rugpull. 🧵 2/Being they do not have that authorization yet, per their letter, we are leaving our post up. Publishing a letter from their attorney does not constitute publishing official documents to prove their legitimacy.

. @0xApeverse you threatening us with a lawsuit for defamation claiming we made up the fact that you have stolen artwork for your NFT... Here is @BoredApeYC #MAYC4849 and your image side by side. Here is also your website image side by side with "The Secret of Monkey Island" Tell us again how you aren't a scammer please