NFT platform OpenSea said it has no evidence of a former employee’s involvement in the AnubisDAO project’s scheme. rug pull in 2021. Cointelegraph reports this.
In an October 6 thread, the NFT Ethics account tagged OpenSea, asking for a response to allegations that the company’s ex-manager Kevin Poulak was allegedly associated with the alias Sisyphus and involved in “various questionable business transactions.”
1/ Dear @OpenSeawhat do you think of the fact that your Head of Ventures, Kevin Pawlak, has been involved in various very dubious business dealings (eg Anubis) and pump & dump schemes under his pseudonymous identity @0xSisyphus (&0xMagellan)? pic.twitter.com/GzIVLJirLE
— NFT Ethics (@NFTethics) October 6, 2023
Researchers from NFT Ethics, as well as Lookonchain analysts, claim Poulak’s key role in promoting AnubisDAO among investors. Shortly before the planned distribution of ANKH tokens, all collected funds in ETH amounting to ~$60 million were transferred to external wallets.
In the thread, the authors of NFT Ethics attempted to say that Sisyphus’s role in the fraudulent scheme was planned by other developers, and the funds were laundered through the PEPE meme token.
An OpenSea representative told the publication that they are not aware of Poulak’s participation in any such scams.
“Kevin is a former employee who left the company in June 2023. He had limited opportunities at OpenSea and worked in a non-managerial position. We know nothing about his involvement in the projects under consideration,” he said.
However, OpenSea admitted that we are talking about Poulak’s alleged activities before he joined the platform.
The accusations were also denied by the famous on-chain detective ZachXBT. He said the NFT Ethics thread was “one of the mediocre” things he’s read.
The analyst added that much of the topic is based on speculation, using “unrelated events without facts.” ZachXBT noted that Sisyphus was the only one who contacted law enforcement after the incident.
That thread is one of the most midcurve things I have read. They make many assumptions off unrelated events without facts.
FixedFloat does tons in volume and same with the other exchanges mentioned. Here is the source address of the April 2023 FixedFloat insider PEPE buys I… https://t.co/0kG2M7DNVi
— ZachXBT (@zachxbt) September 29, 2023
“Is Sisyphus guilty of gross negligence and lying about the Anubis team’s multisig? Absolutely 100%. A civil lawsuit is likely possible for victims. However, negligence is different from stealing money from one’s own project and friends,” the expert said.
ZachXBT noted that the alleged main suspects in the scam are individuals with the aliases Beerus and Ersan. The latter received an “eight-digit dollar amount” in ETH to his wallet in 2023 through Tornado Cash, the analyst noted.
Let us remind you that in the third quarter, the Web3 ecosystem lost $685.5 million as a result of hacking and fraud. Of the total, $22.7 million was due to 27 cases of scam.
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