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The Bored Bunny Case -Breaking

by Mike Robinson

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Influencers, celebrities and celebs promoting NFT scams: The Bored Bunny Case

It comes as no surprise that some influencers don’t care to even check what they are promoting, and on top of that, they often don’t even put disclaimers that they’re being paid to promote a project, despite regulatory requirements to do so. This has often led to multiple problems: the NFT scams and ‘sketchy’ projects attract a large number of supporters, drawn-in investors lose money, and their creators ditch the projects, running off with millions of dollars.

The ‘Bored Bunny Project’ is just one of the most recent examples of a slow rug pull that caused the project to fall apart after raising over $20 million. Bored Bunny NFTs quickly became popular and the community grew rapidly due to celebrity and influencer marketing. Popular figures such as DJ Khaled, French Montana Jake Paul, Floyd Mayweather, David Dobrik, and Floyd Mayweather promoted the project.

Bored Bunny NFTs, which were “ready to take over the metaverse and NFT space,” launched in December 2021, with 4,999 NFTs priced at 0.4 ETH each.

Scam of the Bored Bunny NFT Scam

Zachbxt, top-tier NFT detective and fraudster recently disclosed details regarding the rug pull.

According to him, one obvious red flag on the official website’s ‘Benefits & Utilities’ section was the promised benefit of “2x, 5x, or maybe even 10x the value of your investment within a few days.”

Within an hour of the launch, the Bored Bunny first collection was sold out. The secondary sales brought in 916 Ethereum (about $3M) and 2000ETH (about 7.5M USD). Profits were distributed to seven unknown wallets from the Bored Bunny Contract.

Soon after the first collection, the Bored Bunny team announced another NFT drop – 11,111 ‘Bored Bad Bunnies’ priced at 0.4 ETH, which swiftly generated 3,195 ETH ($10.1M USD) and 95 ETH ($300,000 USD) in secondary sales for the project.

A few days later, a third collection named ‘Bored Mutant Bunny’ appeared. This collection contained 3,00 NFTs each valued at 0.25 ETH. Zachxbt said that it was at this point the community noticed something wasn’t right about the project.

The floor price of three BB collections dropped below the original value, with only 532 of 3,000 NFTs being sold.

The project’s founders then suddenly became inactive and disappeared for a month. Jeff, the founder, has returned and explained his absence to the public using a bizarre excuse.

“Primarily, the reason of my absence this last month was that I have been through a lot of the emails, messages in private.”
After promising to return $600,000.000 to holders, he also promised free Bored Bunny merchandise for NFT holders. Many ridiculed his ‘generosity,’ demanded their money back, and called him a scammer who stole millions from investors.

Influencer Marketing Money laundering

Famous YouTuber and co-owner of esports organisation ‘FaZe Clan’ knowledgeable in NFTs, FaZe Banks, disclosed a message in which the Bored Bunny founders asked him to promote their project, offering to pay $500,000-$750,000 for a 10-second video ad.

American boxing champion Floyd Mayweather who has 7.8 million followers on Twitter (NYSE:), has been known to be a ‘promoter of scams.’ The boxing legend made a number of ad posts for Bored Bunnies, and has previously promoted several failed projects, including ‘Moonshot’, ‘EthereumMax’, and ‘Real Floyd NFT’. Kim Kardashian has also been sued for artificially increasing the price of EthereumMax. Meanwhile, the athlete recently released another suspicious looking NFT project, ‘Mayverse‘.

Jake Paul, an American boxer, brother of Logan Paul and influencer, shared the BB project to his followers. This encouraged him to take part in the Bored Bunny NFTs.

David Dobrik was the YouTube YouTuber with 18.3 Million followers, who has also since deleted another video. This largely consists of a young audience. The promotion for Bored Bunny was posted by Dobrik on Instagram, but he didn’t declare that it was an advert.

Internet celebrities must exercise caution when advertising their projects as they may be charged with promoting frauds. The same also applies to project founders: last month, the two 20-year-old creators of ‘Frosties’ NFTs were arrested after raising $1.1 million in a rug pull scam. The project founders face maximum 20 year sentences for wire fraud and conspiracy money laundering.

The Flipside

Rug pull NFT projects damage the image of the entire DeFi space and make regulations seem increasingly necessary – decentralization is about privacy and autonomy, however, many are abusing these the anonymity to launder money.

Why you should care

Anyone who invests in “artificially hyped” projects is taking a big risk. Our readers are reminded that they must do extensive research on every project to identify red flags and make informed investment decisions. Our comprehensive guide to identifying rug pulling scams will help you understand warning signs.

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