did you invest in this $100m ponzi? 🥴

Axie recovered $30m of funds, someone pleads guilty to a $100m ponzi 😳, and web3 jobs!

Author

Lili (QueenBao)
September 09, 2022

GM Baos.

Finishing off the week with a banger. We're so ready for this weekend...

Today we cover:

  • Axie claws back $30m of funds!

  • EmpiresX' $100m ponzi

  • web3 jobs 🤑

10% of funds recovered for Axie Infinity, one of the largest crypto hacks in history

It isn't often we see companies clawing back funds from a multi-million dollar hack, but this is one of those rare circumstances.

Awhile back, we wrote about the brilliant ploy hackers used to social engineer a developer at Axie Infinity in March. Just a month later, the FBI identified Lazarus and APT38 hackers to be held accountable with both being cryptocurrency heists for the North Korean government.

How did they do it? With something we all desperately need – a job offer with a ridiculously good salary package over LinkedIn. The developer was reported to have undergone several interview rounds too, which meant opening that final PDF for a job offer was inevitable.

Opening the file on a company computer initiated an infection chain that allowed hackers to enter the Ronin systems – the Ethereum sidechain that supports Axie's game. Hackers corrupted 5 of the 9 token validators with hacked private keys, meeting the required threshold for approved signatures.

Altogether Lazarus & APT38 drained 173,600 WETH and $25.5m USDC, which is around $622m at the time.

Fortunately, investigators recovered about 10% of the funds from exchanges where hackers hoped to swap it to fiat for withdrawal! 👏

There's still a 56,000 ETH hole in the Axie DAO though...

Pleading guilty to a $100m ponzi sheme 😳

Someone in Florida is in a federal district court, admitting to a ponzi scheme that stole $100m from investors.

For two years, Joshua David Nicholas was the "Head Trader" of EmpiresX, a crypto investment platform that guaranteed investors 1% of daily profits from a "world class bot" and Nicholas' "trading".

It turns out – neither of these things were true.

EmpiresX co-founders pocketed the investment funds and did some serious shopping. Think lambo, top of the range jewellery from Tiffany & Co, plus made payments for a second home.

The court was able to identify that Nicholas was incapable of trading user funds... the small handful of trades he did do lost a bunch of funds.

Having pleaded guilty to securities fraud, Nicholas faces up to five years in prison. Meanwhile, his co-founders Pires and Goncalves, fled back to their home country in Brazil. They are currently charged for securities fraud, wire fraud and international money laundering.

Be careful out there Baos...

Bao-Sized News

🥲 Some y00ts shenanigans from a tough mint.

🎫 NFT backstage passes that delves into the life of Tom Brady! Only 2,500 tickets starting at $750.

Made us Kek

Web3 Jobs

Take a look at some new job listings available out in Web3! If you’re a bao holder, you’ll get access to more curated job listings FIRST and coaching during our office hours 😉

IT'S THE WEEKEND BAOS. LET'S GET OUT THERE AND HAVE SOME FUN AMIRITE? 🙆🏼‍♀️

–Lili