Stephanie Douse 
A well-known Taiwanese singer lamented the loss of his NFTs to scammers. The artist is estimated to have lost over $500,000 in value due to the phishing scam
Jay Chou, a well-known Taiwanese singer, lamented the loss of his NFTs to scammers in an Instagram post today. The artist is estimated to have lost over $500,000 in value due to the fraudsters.
NFTs have taken the crypto world by storm, becoming the new rage and a status symbol in the crypto world. However, the staggering value of some of these jpegs has attracted a slew of bad actors to this lucrative new ecosystem.
Rug pulls, discord hacks, and phishing scams are some of the methods used to rob people of their assets.
Phishing scams, in particular, have been around for a long time in cybercrime, where fraudsters send messages to people in order to obtain personal information, including private keys in the crypto space. Jay Chou, a well-known Taiwanese singer, revealed today that he was a victim of one of these scams.
Jay Chou took it for an April joke
Chou stated in his post at the time that he believed someone was playing an April Fool’s prank on him. The artist, on the other hand, would realize he no longer possessed his prized NFTs.
According to the information available, the fraudsters stole one BAYC NFT, which was given to him by well-known Taiwanese musician Jeffrey Hwang (aka Machi Big Brother). Chou also suffered the loss of two Doodles NFTs and one MAYC.
On-Chain investigator @zachxbt revealed on Twitter that the NFTs were worth around 169 ETH ($550k). According to Colin Wu, the fraudsters have already listed the stolen BAYC, BAYC #3738, for sale on the NFT marketplace LooksRare.
In a series of tweets, @zachxbt claims that Chou is a victim of the growing verified Twitter BAYC scam.
Scammers have recently been able to purchase verified Twitter accounts, modify them to look like high-ranking Yuga Labs employees, and trick people into clicking malicious links promising airdrops.
If you are a member of the Twitter crypto community, you are very likely to have been tagged in one of these scams. Scammers use verified Twitter accounts to launch fraudulent NFT giveaway and airdrop campaigns, tagging multiple people with bots under the post.
Notably, following the release of ApeCoin by Yuga Labs, scammers used this technique to steal over $1 million in cryptocurrency from unsuspecting victims.