In a typical ‘rag pull’ scam, the creators of the SudoRare NFT marketplace shut down their operations just six hours after the platform was launched. Somewhere over $850,000 (about Rs 68 lakh) were reeled in before SudoRare’s Twitter handle was also deactivated. These funds were stolen in the form of 519 Ether tokens. According to security research firm PechShield, the funds have already been distributed to three different crypto wallets, each receiving 173 ETH. The operators of SudoRare have also allegedly stolen USD Coin and Lookrare tokens.
While not much is known about the creators of SudoRare, PeckShield traced one of the crypto wallet addresses to be part of the stolen ETH tokens registered with Kraken.
As of now, Kraken crypto exchange has not provided any information on the matter.
It is worth noting that several members of the NFT community have been posting warnings on Twitter about SudoRare’s suspicious background.
Alert reported that the forum had an unnamed team promising too-good-to-be-true prizes.
deleted my tweet about @SudoRare Because it could be a scam. Be safe out there :v:
— juansno (@juansno) 17 August 2022
Keep meeting DMs about sudorare
I’m pretty sure it’s a scam
they’re going to steal your coins
— Brent: big_purple_square: (@brentsketit) 16 August 2022
morning family
Here’s how the rug holds up in 3 photos. :point down:#sudoRare
“SudoRare is a gas-efficient NFT AMM built on top of Sudoswap with improved tokenization on Ethereum.”
They ran away with $800k. pic.twitter.com/yuLeWusZUz
— Duo Nine | YCC (@DU09BTC) 23 August 2022
A report by Chainalysis claimed in December that the most common form of scam had been made to swindle over $7.7 billion (about Rs 58,697 crore) from investors last year.
In all, Rag Pul took cryptocurrency worth over $2.8 billion (about Rs 21,333 crore) from victims this year.
It is most commonly seen in decentralized finance (DeFi). Developers eventually remove funds from the liquidity pool, sending the value of the token to zero, then disappearing.
Rag bridges are prevalent in DeFi because with the right technical knowledge, it is cheap and easy to create new tokens on the blockchain and list them on decentralized exchanges (DEXs) without code audits.
Back in March, US prosecutors charged two men with money laundering and fraud, known as ‘Frosties’. Project developers pocketed $1.1 million (about Rs 8 crore) before abandoning their NFT project and leaving buyers high and dry in terms of the promised benefits.
