Scammers Stole NFTs Worth more than $100 Million in One Year

Cryptocurrency risk management firm Elliptic has published a report “NFTs and Financial Crime” suggesting that the total amount of NFT tokens stolen between July 2021 and July 2022 was approximately $100.6 million.

Analysts said the NFT market surged in 2021 as many crypto-investors began actively investing in the growing market, hoping to profit.

The firm notes that despite the drop in the NFT market, fraudsters continued to engage in their activities. The largest number of tokens were stolen in July 2022, with 4,647 assets, and the most by value in May 2022 was around $23.9m.

The largest NFT theft, according to the firm, was that of CryptoPunk, worth $490,000 at the time it was stolen in November 2021. In December 2021, scammers were able to steal "16 NFT blue chips worth $2.1 million" from one victim.

According to analysts, cybercriminals received an average of $300,000 for each financial scam, but the true extent of the crimes remains unknown.

Fraudsters continue to use a variety of deceptive schemes to steal NFT. Most often, attackers used phishing links, fake websites and social media pages, and allegedly free giveaways of tokens from well-known NFT collections.