nft

NFTMachine is the online alias of Tyler Gaye, a Denver, Colorado resident who allegedly orchestrated a presale fraud in early 2021 by raising approximately $500,000 (reportedly 277 ETH from 130+ investors) for a promised NFT marketplace called opeNFT (also stylized ONFT), which was never launched. A Denver District Court judge entered a default judgment of $275,000 against Gaye in November 2022, classifying the conduct as civil theft. On-chain investigator ZachXBT has subsequently alleged Gaye continued launching new crypto projects — including Arcade DAO and Gamegear — under the alias 'scaredofboobs' without satisfying the court-ordered judgment.

Metawin is an offshore crypto casino and gaming platform licensed under the Anjouan (Comoros) gaming authority, operated by Asobi N.V. from Curacao, and founded by Richard 'Skel' Skelhorn. On November 3, 2024, the platform suffered a significant hot wallet exploit across Ethereum and Solana blockchains resulting in approximately $4 million in stolen funds, with blockchain investigator ZachXBT tracing the stolen assets to KuCoin and a nested HitBTC service across more than 115 attacker-linked addresses. The CEO subsequently claimed to have personally covered the losses, restoring withdrawals for approximately 95% of affected users, though the platform's offshore jurisdictional status and the underlying security vulnerability raise ongoing concerns.

JRNY Crypto (real name allegedly Tony Spark) is a pseudonymous cryptocurrency and NFT influencer operating since 2017, with over 760,000 followers on X and 590,000 YouTube subscribers at peak activity. ZachXBT flagged the account in November 2024 after approximately $4 million in crypto assets were drained from associated wallets in a suspected private key compromise; JRNY did not publicly acknowledge the incident. Separate community-sourced allegations include undisclosed paid promotions, a paid strategic advisory role at BSC launchpad Seedify that critics allege was not consistently disclosed to audiences, and criticism over the JRNY Club and Planet Xolo NFT projects failing to meet roadmap commitments.

Vitalik Buterin is the legitimate co-founder of Ethereum and is not himself a scam actor. However, his name, likeness, and social media presence constitute one of the most heavily weaponized impersonation surfaces in crypto. Documented threats include a September 2023 SIM-swap of his X account (linked to Pink Drainer, resulting in ~$691K stolen from followers), persistent fake giveaway livestreams on YouTube, thousands of fraudulent Instagram accounts, and an escalating campaign of AI-generated deepfake videos distributing wallet-drainer phishing links.

Hypurr NFTs are a 4,600-piece cat-themed NFT collection airdropped by the Hyper Foundation on September 28, 2025, to early Hyperliquid users who participated in the November 2024 Genesis Event. On the day of launch, blockchain investigator ZachXBT flagged the theft of eight Hypurr NFTs from compromised HyperEVM wallets, yielding approximately $400,000 in profit for the attacker. The collection itself is a legitimate product of the Hyper Foundation, but the incident exposed wallet security vulnerabilities in the HyperEVM ecosystem and coincided with a broader pattern of exploits across Hyperliquid-based protocols in late September 2025.