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A young cybercriminal is going to prison after stealing NFTs and cryptocurrency using hijacked accounts on X—formerly Twitter—in an elaborate con.
Canadian citizen Cameron Albert Redman, 22, was sentenced to one year in prison on Tuesday for conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud, and conspiracy to commit aggravated identity theft.
U.S. authorities said Wednesday that Redman and his co-conspirators in 2022 conned over 200 victims and pocketed $794,000 in days with a scam where they used hacked social media accounts of digital artists to post links to copycat websites that resembled those of notable creators and brands.
After seizing control of high-profile X accounts, Redman and his allies launched fake raffle promotions, persuading investors to click on a link and authorize a transaction—which gave them access to their crypto wallets holding NFTs and coins, which they then swiped and sold for illicit profits.
Screenshots from court filings suggest that hijacked accounts include those of creators like Mike “Beeple” Winkelmann and Gary Vaynerchuk, along with the Nouns project and luxury brand Louis Vuitton.
“Though victims thought they were authorizing a transaction to receive NFTs into their digital wallets, they unknowingly enabled the conspirators to remove cryptocurrency and NFTs from their wallets,” feds said in a statement.
NFTs—or non-fungible tokens—are blockchain tokens linked to digital media like artwork, music, or video game assets, along with physical items like products and real estate. The products exploded in value during the 2021 bull market, but demand for NFTs fell sharply into 2022. While interest remains well down from that initial fervor, there have been recent signs of life in the NFT market.
Court documents said that Redman was an intelligent cybercriminal who had already been to jail for stealing over $40 million in crypto in a SIM-swapping attack.
“The defendant has established himself as a sophisticated, successful, and repeat cybercriminal,” court documents read.
“Though one year is a significant sentence for a juvenile, it appeared to have no deterrent effect,” they added. “Within at least one year of being released, the defendant was camped out in his father’s basement looking for—and finding—new ways to profit from crime.”
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