Bored Ape holder loses three rare NFTs to phishing scam

A Bored Ape Yacht Club holder appears to have lost three NFTs valued at a total of 54.8505 ETH ($164,400) to a malicious actor. 

As first noted by the crypto investigator ZachXBT, the Bored Ape holder purported lost the three rare NFTs to a phishing attack. The blockchain explorer Etherscan also notes that the wallet associated with the BAYC NFT transactions has been used in previous phishing scams. It remains unclear how exactly this phishing attack occurred. 

The Bored Ape NFTs phished were BAYC #7531, BAYC #6736 and BAYC #2100. They're valued at 21 ETH ($62,960), 15.8505 WETH ($47,500) and 18 ETH ($54,000), respectively, according to the NFT marketplace OpenSea . 

BAYC #7531 contains the trait of white fur, which only 4% of the total 10,000 NFTs have. BAYC #6736 has the "small grin" trait with a rarity of 3% and BAYC #2100 has the traits of Bored Pizza (0.5%), tie-dye shirt (1%), girl's short hair (2%), blindfold (3%), gold stud (4%) and pink fur (5%). 

Despite the high value of these lost Bored Ape NFTs, the collection's floor prices have largely depreciated over recent months. Bored Ape Yacht Club floor prices fell to 15.09 ETH as of May 8, according to The Block's Data Dashboard. The collection brought in $13.3 million in trading volume between Apr. 28 and May 5. 

Trail of phishing scams

"Phishing schemes often use spoofing techniques to lure you in and get you to take the bait. These scams are designed to trick you into giving information to criminals that they shouldn’t have access to," the United States Federal Bureau of Investigations wrote in a statement . 

Crypto phishing attacks caused the loss of around $300 million to affect a total of 324,000 victims in 2023, The Block previously reported . The highest amount phished from a single user last year came in at $24 million. In the crypto space, phishing scammers often compromise a project's website or social media account to bring traffic to a malicious site, disseminate fraudulent token airdrops or plaster comments with malicious links on social media. 

The Block reached out to ZachXBT for comment.