It’s a crazy world out there as far as NFTs are concerned. While some have managed to back a lot of money from them, others have succumbed to scams, swindles, and rug pulls. The non-fungible token (NFT) market is rapidly growing and so is the number of scammers out there. The recent Kia Sedona NFT is a rather peculiar scam that has left many baffled.
Recently, there was a meme on crypto Twitter where the Kia Sedona brand of car was considered to be hard money. From that joke, 10 anonymous individuals decided to create a jazzy website with the name “Jay Pegs Auto Mark. It has been reported that the 10 individuals behind the sale on this NFT and their website were not in any way affiliated with the car manufacturer.
The supposed NFT was for the DONA reservation tokens. People are able to buy these tokens on Miso, which is SushiSwap’s token sale platform. SushiSwap is a decentralized crypto exchange. It was reported that each DONA token to be bought in the sale was worth one 2007Kia Sedona NFT, and could be swapped for it. This was out of a possible 10,000.
The great thing is that the sale of the token went quite well. In fact, it managed to raise 864.8 in ether, which is equivalent to $1.3 million. However, things went sideways for the anonymous team of 10 coders. When they chose to use Miso, they had no idea that all the funds were going to disappear.
Joseph Delong, the CTO of SushiSwap, reported that an unknown contactor inserted a malicious code into the platform. The code changed the destination address of all the funds that were coming in through the sale of the token. The funds were converted to the anonymous contactor’s address. Unfortunately, the only sale that was affected by this was the Jay Pegs Auto Mart one. Thi smeans that all funds that were raised from the sale were stolen.
Joseph Delong went on to say that SushiSwap had reached out to Binance and FTX, which are crypto exchanges, to identify the hacker. To do this, the two exchanges had to provide the KYC information of the hacker's address. However, the two exchanges have not done that yet.
In the event that the funds had not been returned by 8 AM ET, Stephen Palley, who is partner at the legal firm, Aherson Kill, was going to file a complaint with the FBI. From then on, the FBI would look into the transaction to find out the identity of the hacker and hopefully get the funds returned to Jay Pegs Auto Mart.
Although Jay Pegs Auto Mart lost all the funds raised from the sale, they announced on their Twitter account that all the buyers were going to receive their Kia Sedona NFTs. This comes as a great relief to the buyers. This comes as a warning to all who might want to sell NFTs in the future. It is very important to do thorough research beforehand and make sure that great security measures are in place to stop hackers in their tracks.
