Pixel Penguins Dupes NFT Influencers with Fake Cancer Ruse

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Deep within the murky underbelly of Web3, the place undesirables resort to devious techniques to earn a fast buck, one undertaking has set a brand new low. A scammer peddling “Pixel Penguins” hoodwinked quite a lot of NFT influencers with a faux most cancers story with a purpose to promote their NFT assortment.

Launched in February 2023, the Pixel Penguins undertaking initially failed to realize any traction with its 10k NFTs. Nevertheless, its founder, going by the names hopeexists1 and Sarah, had already hatched a extra nefarious plan to get issues up and working.

Working by means of the side know because the ‘NFT influencer,’ Sarah started to weave a story involving most cancers, pricey therapy, and the elimination of an eye fixed. Again in April, Sarah scored her first break when an Azuki collector named Levi picked up her story, scoring her modest features.

Nevertheless, it wasn’t till Andrew Wang, an ‘influencer’ with over 100k Twitter followers, go concerned that issues actually started to take off. On Might 31, Andrew posted a thread outlining Sarah’s plight, indicating that he personally knew the artist and had interacted inside her sphere of affect.

Following the Tweet, the Pixel Penguins undertaking shortly offered out and started trending on OpenSea.

I awakened right now to see one among my buddies trending on twitter, @Hopeexist1. she made a set to assist herself battle most cancers and a few superior web3 individuals spotlighted her right now, so i might like so as to add to it 🧵 pic.twitter.com/Fr5Mcu26eR

— andrew wang (@andr3w) Might 30, 2023

Pixel Penguins Attracts Too A lot Consideration and Begins to Unravel

As information of the Pixel Penguins sudden rise started to flow into, much less gullible members of the NFT neighborhood started to analyze. What they finally unearthed was a path of stolen artwork, faux most cancers claims and shady interactions.

In accordance with legendary crypto sleuth, ZachXBT, the undertaking made off with 61.686 ETH ($117k) which has since been transferred to 2 recent addresses. Buying and selling of Pixel Penguins has now been disabled, and all web sites and social media associated to the gathering have mysteriously vanished.

Right now @andr3w supported a charity undertaking rug by @hopeexist1 somebody supposedly battling most cancers inflicting the undertaking to mint out.

“I’ll put my rep on the road to say that is for actual amidst all of the scams in our house”

It seems she stole the artwork and deactivated her account. pic.twitter.com/q4HivGBLMY

— ZachXBT (@zachxbt) Might 31, 2023

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