Where there’s a meme, there’s a scam

NFT

Seemingly trying to capitalize on the frothy rollercoaster ride Pepe has been on, at least two Twitter accounts posted offers to hit free NFTs for anyone holding the memecoin.

The link posted alone advertises a supply of 10,000 available NFTs despite the obvious red flag of linking to a collection that was struck a few days ago that only had a total of 6,969 non-fungible tokens on offer.

“Navigate to the coins page of the tweetyou will find a section titled ‘Buy a Pepe NFT’,” which misleadingly redirects to an NFT collection called Lofi Pepenoted The Block Research analyst Brad Kay. “Funnily enough, the official Lofi-Pepe collection, which launched on May 6, has a (fitting) total inventory of 6,969. This deceptive practice is a common tactic used by scammers, who lure unsuspecting buyers into fraudulent transactions.”

Example of misleading Pepe NFT tweet.

Crypto scams trying to catch up with the latest digital asset fad, like this one with Pepe, have been so common for years that much of the market is numb to them. The two deceptive Twitter posts have been reposted and liked tens of thousands of times — a process that may be bot-driven but still makes the pitch seem more authentic.

Bots are such a problem, they almost stopped Elon Musk from going through with his purchase of Twitter last year. He has ranted against the bogus accounts, saying at one point that he will “beat the spam bots or die trying”.

A call to connect their wallets

The suspicious link asks potential buyers to plug in their wallets to save one of 10,000 Pepe NFTs. The link also points not only to the official Lofi-Pepe collection, but also to the gaming platform Topia, which bills itself as the “next Minecraft.” It seems that linking to the two legitimate companies is an attempt to make the link seem trustworthy.

Kay advises potential buyers of Pepe NFTs to become increasingly vigilant. With the suspicious link, he said, “unwary investors may think they are buying from the Lofi-Pepe collection, only to be cheated with their tokens or accidentally mint an entirely different collection.”

Both the Lofi-Pepe collection and Topia did not immediately respond to comments. A contact for the Twitter accounts promoting the apparently fraudulent Pepe Collection, @Miley18397515 and @StarkZ_ETHs, could not be found.

The official Lofi-Pepe collection has over $2 million in trading volume since its launch CryptoSlam! facts.