Bored Ape owner loses NFTs worth $576,000 to scam
The owner of a collection of highly prized Bored Ape and Mutant Ape NFTs has lost $576,000 (£440,000) worth of assets to a scam.
The victim entered into an exchange with the scammer on a trading platform called Swapkiwi. The hacker duped the trader into swapping a Bored Ape and two Mutant Ape NFTs for worthless images edited to include fake verification ticks.
“Please be careful when swapping. Scammers photoshopped a verification badge into an NFT,” said Swapkiwi in a tweet, urging users to double check the provenance of images on sites such as Opensea or Etherscan before approving transactions.
Swapkiwi said it is working on “improvements” after the incident which showcased the pitfalls which can await traders using online NFT marketplaces. The scammer used images of real NFTs to create the fake images which were also uploaded to the Opensea market.
Bored Ape Yacht Club collectibles, which have a floor price of 111 Ether (£276,000), are a frequent target for scammers. The official discord server for collectors was hacked last week with one user losing a Mutant Ape Yacht Club NFT after clicking on a phishing link.
Opensea users lost an estimated $1.7m of assets in a February phishing attack. Mistakes are also common with multiple traders listing Bored Ape NFTs at a value far below their market price.
Read more: Bored Apes NFT creator sets sights on metaverse after $450m capital raise