presale-fraud

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.

Aqua (also known as AquaBot) was a Solana-based Telegram trading bot that conducted a presale in September 2025, raising approximately 21,770 SOL ($4.65 million) from retail investors before executing an apparent exit scam. On-chain investigator ZachXBT flagged the project after presale funds were split into four tranches, routed through intermediary wallets, and sent to instant exchanges hours before the scheduled token generation event. The project had secured endorsements from multiple established Solana ecosystem participants — including Meteora, Helius, Dialect, SYMMIO — and had received a near-perfect audit score from QuillAudits just days before the alleged rug pull.