DOJ Charges Man in $450,000 OpenSea Spoofing Scam

Soufiane Oulahyane, a Moroccan nationwide, has been indicted by the USA Legal professional for the Southern District of New York for allegedly creating an OpenSea lookalike to acquire unauthorized entry to cryptocurrency and NFTs.

The fees revolve round a scheme referred to as “spoofing,” a type of fraud the place the perpetrator creates a lookalike of a trusted web site to steal person credentials. In accordance with the indictment, Oulahyane meticulously crafted a fraudulent copy of the favored NFT market, then used paid commercials to make his sham website seem first in search outcomes for “OpenSea.” When the person entered their login info on the misleading platform, their credentials have been transmitted to an e mail account managed by Oulahyane.

The scheme allegedly unfolded in September 2021 and resulted in important theft. The first sufferer, an NFT proprietor primarily based in Manhattan, unwittingly handed his seed phrase — a string of phrases that management entry to a cryptocurrency pockets — to the spoofed website. Oulahyane reportedly used this phrase to switch the contents of the sufferer’s pockets to himself, promoting 39 NFTs, together with a Bored Ape that the sufferer had bought for about 49 ETH.

The indictment additional particulars how Oulahyane allegedly offered a Meebit and a Bored Ape Kennel Membership NFT from the sufferer’s pockets. The sufferer had initially bought these NFTs for 9.88 ETH and 6 ETH, respectively. Oulahyane allegedly offered the stolen NFTs on the respectable OpenSea market, then transferred the fraudulent cryptocurrency proceeds to a pockets past the sufferer’s management, bringing the full worth of the stolen digital collectibles to roughly $450,000.

Oulahyane is presently in custody in Morocco, going through prices of wire fraud and using an unauthorized entry machine for aggravated id theft. If discovered responsible, he may withstand 47 years in jail.

Editor’s word: This text was written by an nft now workers member in collaboration with OpenAI’s GPT-4.