No, a crypto CEO wasn’t arrested for smuggling 20,000 condoms

The team behind a crypto-based mobile game has faked a Wall Street Journal (WSJ) article that claimed the project’s founder was arrested attempting to smuggle 20,000 condoms into Singapore.  

“Robin Hood game-based meme coin” DoginHood shared a screenshot of the supposed article to its X (formerly Twitter) account on Saturday. The ‘story’ reported that the project’s CEO had been arrested by Singaporean customs officers at 4pm SGT and was “now in custody.”

It went on to claim that, “Authorities believe the condoms were for a crypto conference in the city-state this week.”

DoginHood said, “We already reached out to our legal team and our contacts in Singapore trying to solve the situation.” 

The image shared on X features a blurred-out WSJ logo and similar formatting to the renowned publication. However, the outlet hasn’t published anything on any crypto founder smuggling condoms, and the fake headline isn’t capitalized in the standard WSJ style.

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Some X users attempted to back up the fake story with one citing Singaporean law on condom imports. 

DoginHood is another clicker game on the Telegram messaging app that offers little gameplay beyond mashing the screen to earn in-game currency. The fake story appears to be piggybacking on the upcoming Singapore crypto conference.  

Another crypto project, NEAR protocol, opted for a ‘fake news as PR’ strategy when it claimed it had been hacked earlier this month. However, it turned out that claims of a cyberattack story were just to hype its upcoming Hackathon event. It didn’t go down well with everybody.

“Pretending that your socials have been hacked in order do a 4chan/Max Headroom style gimmick doesn’t make you marketing savvy, it makes you dumb as fuck for normalizing breaches,” one X user wrote.

Another said, “We wish you were actually hacked so we wouldn’t have had to read this.”

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