RTFKT’s COO Says He Lost His NFTs in Phishing Attack

New year or not, NFT thefts are on the rise. Nikhil Gopalani, the COO of RTFKT, has become the latest victim. The exec took to Twitter to reveal losing a significant number of NFTs from his wallet in a phishing attack.

“Hey Clone X community – I was hacked by a clever Phisher (same phone # as apple ID) & sold all my clone x / some other nfts… Obviously pretty upset and hurt by this and I havent really been able to move all day. Hope people who bought my clones love them (being positive).”

• Phishing scams have become rampant in the crypto ecosystem, where scammers lure users to accidentally hand over the credentials to their wallets to initiate an irreversible transaction.
• On-chain data revealed that the attacker used two wallets used to collectively drain more than $173,000 worth of NFTs from Gopalani’s wallet.
• While one of the wallets was found empty, the other had 19 CloneX NFTs, 18 RTKFT Space Pods, 17 Loot Pods, 11 CryptoKicks, and 19 RTFKT Animus Eggs, among others.
• Details are thin at the moment, but RTFKT’s CTO, Samuel Cardillo, said Gopalani may have provided the phishers, posing as big companies, with confidential data.
• Many community members were not happy that the execs chose not to divulge more details on the entire incident and called their responses to be “very corporate.”
• Cardillo, however, dismissed the accusation and hinted that a legal investigation may be underway, which could be why more information could not be shared.
• One Twitter user made an interesting point about stolen NFTs.

“If someone steals your bicycle, it’s generally understood that the bike is still yours. With an NFT, the “owner” is whoever has the token in their wallet. So, if someone’s ape NFT gets stolen via a phishing scam, the blockchain treats the thief as the new owner.”