French Prosecutors Charges Five Alleging of NFT Thieves

On 12th October 2022, a French news agency AFP reported a group of five people charged for allegedly stealing several NFTs. Paris prosecutors said that they put the allegation of stealing digital collectibles worth 2.5 million USD. The theft of these non–fungible tokens were said to take place between 2021 and 2022.

The prosecutors also mentioned that among the stolen NFTs, some were from famous NFT collections—Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) and Mutant Ape Yacht Club (MAYC). There were five victims reported due to the theft, one of them is said to lose his BAYC NFT worth around one million USD.

Deputy chief at French cyber-crime authority OCLCTIC, Christophe Durand stated to get to know about the incident following the post of online investigation of ZackXBT. The agency gave the credit to the pseudonym blockchain sleuth of bringing the case in the limelight.

Durand also noted that the investigator started probing over the issue following the complaints received from the crypto community who owns famous limited edition digital collectibles replicating monkeys Bored Ape Yacht Club.

The alleged fraudster group is said to create a website and claimed that it would let people create a static image of their NFTs. Several NFT holders, finding the idea quite interesting, went on to use the website.

However, the website turned out to be a decoy eventually which cheated on non-fungible token holders. The platform asked for credentials which later led the group to transfer the users NFT holding.

The group of fraudsters is said to include five people all in their 20s. Out of which, two were claimed to play a prominent role and hence charged with pre-trial detention.

The entire NFT space saw a boom in the year 2021. So much hype created around the digital innovation that led to emergence of various NFT collections, digital artists and NFT enthusiasts. Many celebrities also jumped into the stream from American artists Eminem, Snoop Dogg, Justin Beiber, footballer Leionel Messi and Neymar, former Twitter founder Jack Doorsey and a whole long list of them.

Non-fungible tokens are ownership record of a digital asset based on the blockchain, the same technology underlying the cryptocurrencies inlucind bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH) and many others. Being based in blockchain, it becomes almost impossible for someone to replicate the digital art collectible belonging to its real owner.

However, once a popular and widely adopted crypto, innovations have witnessed huge declines in many development metrics from floor prices, trading volume, etc. This happened given a lot of reasons, including recent crypto winters due to different reasons like Russia-Ukraine war, macroeconomic disturbance, Terra ecosystem collapse, etc. Growing security issues and theft also led to distrust among people.

For instance, Immunify reported that the prominent NFT OpenSea has witnessed a loss of about 14 million USD worth Ape NFTs alone last year.

Andrew is a blockchain developer who developed his interest in cryptocurrencies while his post-graduation. He is a keen observer of details and shares his passion for writing along with being a developer. His backend knowledge about blockchain helps him give a unique perspective to his writing