Another day, another massive scam to hit the NFT community. This time, crypto and NFT enthusiasts were bitten hard by a scam involving brand new Cryptobatz NFT, when scammers took over a link posted to social media.
An NFT series created by Sutter Systems in collaboration with metal god Ozzy Osbourne, Cryptobatz are a series of simple pixelart images of bats, subtly different and computer generated, that NFT collectors are going nuts for. Back on December 31st, the official Cryptobatz Twitter account posted a Discord link to get fans connected and ready for the ‘minting’ to take place.
The problem arose when the official link was later changed to a different address, without the tweets containing the previously provided link being removed. Fans were still following the original link to the now incorrect Discord, and scammers saw their chance to crash the party.
Scammers took control of the previous Discord link, and made it out to still be the Cryptobatz group, and from there could easily sucker in NFT fans following the still undeleted tweets from Cryptobatz and Ozzy himself.
Upon logging in to the scam Discord, members were prompted to verify their crypto wallets by linking themselves to what turned out to be a phishing site. It’s unknown exactly how many users were fooled, but it was reported that the group had a total of 1330 members by the time the scam was uncovered.
Users were quick to react, taking to Twitter in an attempt to warn Cryptobatz about the scam. Even then, the NFT company was slow to react and take down the tweets containing the incorrect Discord links. When asked about where the responsibility in such an occurrence lies, Cryptobatz creators Sutter Systems claimed the blame lies entirely with Discord.
Sutter Systems co-founder ‘Jepeggi‘ stated: “Although we feel very sorry for the people that have fallen prey to these scams, we cannot take responsibility for the actions of scammers exploiting Discord, a platform we have absolutely no control over.”
Discord has stated they are aware of the scam, and are in touch with affected parties, promising to ban certain users and shut down scam Discord groups.
This Cryptobatz situation is the latest in an unending string of scammers taking advantage of the easy money found in crypto users’ wallets. One scam in particular made off with over $1.3 million last week, when yet another series of ‘Ape Club’ NFTs disappeared without trace.
