On May 31st excused crypto-influencer Andrew Wang among his 190,000 Twitter followers. Because “Sarah’s” story is a fake. And he promoted them. The scammers collected $117,000 in cryptocurrencies with a “charity drive” for a person who claimed to be seriously ill. To that end, she sold an NFT collection called Pixel Penguins. As it turned out, other artists were also used for the motifs. Then the communication suddenly breaks off.
Fake art and a deleted Twitter account
How could it come to this? A person who claims to be battling cancer creates an NFT collection on the Foundation platform. Whether the person posing as “Sarah” really has cancer has not been confirmed. A picture of a young woman with a bandaged head is circulating online. She then contacts crypto influencers on Twitter, hoping they will share the “story” and encourage their communities to support the project. Namely with the purchase of the NFTs.
Wang fell for the scam. Shortly before the fraud was exposed, he put his hand in the fire for the authenticity of the story.
Today @andr3w supported a charity project rug by @hopeexist1 someone supposedly battling cancer causing the project to mint out.
“I’ll put my rep on the line to say this is for real amidst all the scams in our space”
It turns out she stole the art and deactivated her account. pic.twitter.com/q4HivGBLMY
— ZachXBT (@zachxbt) May 31, 2023
But the fraud was discovered when Sarah’s Twitter account (@hopeexist1) went offline a few hours later. Wang sorry turns to his community and is outraged. According to his own statements, he was in contact with the alleged patient for more than a year. He also spoke on the phone with a person who posed as her art teacher. “He says she’s the best student he’s ever had, that her talent is too valuable, that she has to survive,” Wang said before the fraud was exposed. The influencer distances himself from the project and in no way claims to have received any money from the dubious “charity campaign”.
Trail leads to decentralized crypto exchange
Then, on May 31st, came doubt on the authenticity of the NFT collection. “I believe that sarah/hopeexist listed work on foundation that was not hers, which calls into question the legitimacy of her work,” writes Wang. The suspicion should be confirmed. Apparently the pictures have already been published “by other artists on a Chinese website”. The on-chain analyst, who goes by the pseudonym ZachXBT on Twitter, weighed in. “Currently, the Pixel Penguin smart contract is holding $117,000 (61,686 ETH)”, he tweets the same day. According to the blockchain forensic scientist, the funds flowed from there to two accounts of the OKX crypto exchange. So far there is no information whether the exchange has identified the owners of the wallets.
However, the accusation that the Hopeexist1 account is selling fake NFTs has been around since 2022. A Twitter user made it already in November attentive. As a result, Wang has to listen to allegations from ZachXBT that he is “not sure” how much the influencer “actually ‘verified'” when reviewing the story.
