New York Attorney General wants to serve crypto thieves via NFT after $2.2m heist

New York Attorney General Letitia James is suing scammers who allegedly stole crypto worthy $2.2 million.

She doesn’t cognize who they are— but it doesn’t matter. She’ll archer them with a non-fungible token.

James’ bureau intends to service the unidentified scammers by dropping an NFT into their crypto wallets, the bureau said Thursday. The NFT volition incorporate a nexus to a website with documents detailing the lawsuit.

It volition beryllium the archetypal clip a regulator has served an alleged transgression utilizing NFT, the bureau said.

For each their revolutionary potential, blockchains are, astatine their heart, thing much than tamper-proof, nationalist ledgers. While prosecutors person yet to place the alleged scammers, they bash cognize the addresses of their crypto wallets.

It isn’t the archetypal clip that lawyers person had to get originative successful the shadowy satellite of crypto, which prizes anonymity. Bitcoin is present a trillion-dollar asset, and yet radical are inactive debating the individuality of its pseudonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto.

Last year, lawyers successful a class-action suit against DeFi elephantine Lido DAO served the ostensibly leaderless integer cooperative by posting the litigation connected the Lido DAO governance forum, wherever members statement changes to the Lido protocol.

It is unclear erstwhile the New York Attorney General volition service the alleged scammers. The bureau did not instantly respond to a DL News enquiry connected Friday.

According to the complaint, scammers offering fake work-from-home occupation opportunities convinced their victims to bargain stablecoins and nonstop them to the scammers’ crypto wallets.

“Scammers sent substance messages to New Yorkers promising them good-paying, flexible jobs lone to instrumentality them into purchasing cryptocurrency and past stealing it from them,” James said successful a statement.

From January to June 2024, the alleged scammers would nonstop unsolicited messages and often posed arsenic recruiters moving connected behalf of existent companies, according to the lawyer general’s office.

Victims who responded were told to proceed the speech done WhatsApp, wherever they were told they could marque wealth by posting merchandise reviews connected companies’ websites.

“Trainers” explained that posting the reviews — for products priced successful Tether — required the victims to support a “working relationship equilibrium adjacent to oregon greater than the ‘price’ assigned to the product,” according to the lawsuit.

The victims were told they could person crypto for reviewing the products and hitting definite milestones. But the wage they were earning was fake, portion the relationship balances they were required to support “simply went into wallets that Defendants owned and/or controlled.”

One victim, a naturalized US national from Croatia referred to lone arsenic “Ally,” mislaid much than $100,000 successful the scam, according to the lawsuit. Another, 38-year-old tech salesperson and Florida nonmigratory “Dena,” mislaid much than $300,000.

Victims’ crypto was transferred to 3 wallets containing astir $2.2 cardinal successful USDC and Tether. The companies down some stablecoins person frozen the stolen crypto, and the lawyer general’s bureau volition instrumentality that crypto to the victims erstwhile it secures support from a court.

The lawyer general’s bureau is seeking penalties, arsenic good arsenic prohibitions connected the alleged scammers’ doing immoderate crypto oregon commodities concern successful New York, among different things.

Aleks Gilbert is simply a New York-based DeFi analogous for DL News. You tin scope him astatine [email protected].