For Just A Phoney Azuki NFT Airdrop Fraudsters Were Hijacking Confirmed Twitter Identities

The legitimate designers of the Bored Ape Yacht Club and Azuki NFT initiatives are not involved in the scams. Only current Bored Ape owners received ApeCoin, which was distributed to NFT owners’ wallets, while Azuki NFT owners received Beans. Exclusive benefits are available to owners of these valuable NFT collectibles.

A phishing email pretending to be sent from Twitter’s support staff was used in at least two cases to compromise the journalist’s account. Their account, according to one journalist, has blasted out over 6,000 tweets. Almost all of them identified a large number of possible victims of the scam.

More than $1 million in NFTs were allegedly taken from collectors after they took part in a Twitter scam offering a bounty of ApeCoin tokens to consumers. When a wallet was connected, the scammers took all of the NFTs in the wallet, which in some cases included things from the Bored Ape and Mutant Ape Yacht Club.

Scammers posing as Azuki NFT members are duping people and snatching NFTs from their wallets. Scammers use the accounts of verified individuals, including some journalists, to carry out the scam. Don’t connect your Ethereum wallet if you’ve been tagged in a discussion claiming a fantastic opportunity to receive free Azuki NFTs. It’s most likely a recent scam, and it’s not Azuki’s developers’ official initiative.

Blasted Out Over 6,000 Tweets

Scammers are copying verified Twitter accounts, including those of journalists and media professionals, and changing the profile content and photos to make it look like the account belongs to one of the Azuki project’s co-creators (the real founders at Chiru Labs all use pseudonyms). The scammer then tweets a link promising a hidden airdrop of Beanz, the NFT drop that was given out for free to existing Azuki NFT holders last week. NFT collectors should click the link to claim a bean, after which they will be asked to connect an Ethereum wallet as part of the fraud, according to the tweet.

Finally, it appears that those that link their wallets to the site have NFTs deducted from their wallets. In exchange, they don’t get any Beanz NFTs or anything else. A phishing email pretending to be sent from Twitter’s support staff was used in at least two cases to compromise the journalist’s account. Their account, according to one journalist, has blasted out over 6,000 tweets. Almost all of them identified a large number of possible victims of the scam.

The Azuki-themed fraud is eerily similar to a recent one utilizing ApeCoin (APE), an Ethereum-based token created for Yuga Labs’ Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT project, which is built on the Web3 platform.

In March, more than $1 million in NFTs were allegedly taken from collectors after they took part in a Twitter scam offering a bounty of ApeCoin tokens to consumers. When a wallet was connected, the scammers took all of the NFTs in the wallet, which in some cases included things from the Bored Ape and Mutant Ape Yacht Club.

NFT Collectors To Join Their Scheme

In a similar way to the Azuki fraud, the ApeCoin scam hacked the Twitter accounts of verified people, including journalists, and claimed to be the founders of Yuga Labs and the Bored Ape Yacht Club. Surprisingly, some ApeCoin scam victims claimed that their wallets were not connected to the specified website, but that their NFTs were nonetheless stolen.

Using stolen verified Twitter identities, the scammers were able to persuade a number of NFT collectors to join their scheme. People have publicly questioned why Twitter would validate a scammer in some cases, yet the situation is the opposite: a scammer used a verified account to appear legitimate. In all scenarios, the legitimate designers of the Bored Ape Yacht Club and Azuki NFT initiatives are not involved in the scams. Only current Bored Ape owners received ApeCoin, which was distributed to NFT owners’ wallets, while Azuki NFT owners received Beans. Exclusive benefits are available to owners of these valuable NFT collectibles.

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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