AnubisDAO Scammed, Stolen Funds Laundered via Tornado Cash

Almost two years after the dog-themed decentralized finance (DeFi) project AnubisDAO was scammed out of nearly $60 million in Ether, the stolen funds were secreted away using Tornado Cash.

Due to the preceding Dogecoin trend, AnubisDAO raised 13,556 ETH from crypto investors in October 2021.

Approximately twenty hours into the investment, however, the funds were sent to a different address, resulting in an immediate loss for the investors.

The illicit funds were transferred via Tornado Cash, a decentralized protocol that enables private transactions, between July 15 and 16.

As shown in the screenshot below, the owner of 13,556 ETH divided and transferred the funds using 100 ETH per transaction.

A snippet of AnubisDAO’s rug-pulled funds’ transaction history. Source: Etherscan

PeckShield, a blockchain researcher, disclosed the information at a time when 13,556 ETH were worth approximately $60 million.

At the time of writing, the misappropriated funds totaled nearly $26.2 million after nearly two years.

Despite the extreme unlikelihood of receiving a refund once the bear market recovers, a few deceived investors remain optimistic as they watch their funds disappear into the void.

Before investing, investors are therefore advised to conduct an extensive investigation of a project and its founders.

A related technical difficulty renders it “impossible” for Geist Finance to reenable lending, as doing so would result in bad debt for holders of non-Multichain coins such as Magic Internet Money (MIM) or Fantom.