Only a few days after the 40th anniversary of Ozzy Osbourne’s legendary bat bite, the metal rocker’s CryptoBatz NFTs (non-fungible tokens) were targeted by scammers.
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Osbourne’s collection of 9,666 unique digital bat designs was created with the NFT studio Sutter Systems. “CryptoBatz is a fucking mental project for NFT collectors and fans,” Osbourne stated previously. “The design pays tribute to one of my most iconic on-stage moments and is a chance to acquire a rare piece of art history. I love it.”
Shortly after the tokens were put up for sale, a bad link was constructed by scammers to drain supporters of the cryptocurrency in their digital wallets. This scam was set up through a fake Discord server, and according to reporting by The Verge, around 1,330 members are thought to have been affected.
Tim Silman, a member of the nonprofit workforce, was one of the people impacted by this scam, and he estimates that he lost around $300 to $400. “I’ve seen at least a dozen people on Twitter voicing this same issue,” Silman told The Verge. “If you look at the transactions on Etherscan, others lost a lot more than me.”
The Sutter Systems co-founder, who goes by the name Jepeggi, also gave a statement to The Verge about this incident. “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 that we have absolutely no control over,” Jepeggi said. “In our opinion this situation and hundreds of others that have taken place across other projects in the NFT space could have easily been prevented if Discord just had a better response/support/fraud team in place to help big projects like ours.”
In response, Discord senior manager for corporate communications said: “Our Trust & Safety team is in touch with the server owners and are investigating the incident,” said Peter Day, senior manager for corporate communications at Discord. “Our team takes action when we become aware of attacks like this one, including banning users and shutting down servers.”
Osbourne has yet to comment personally on this matter.
Photo by Nitin Vadukul.
