NFT collector Pranksy has been refunded the 100 Ether he spent on a digital artwork fraudulently claiming to have been composed by common artist, Banksy.
Nonfungible token collector Pransky was duped out of 97.67 Ether, price $341,500, after the website of common artist Banksy was hijacked to promote a fake NFT auction.
Nevertheless, virtually all the cash has since been refunded.
On Aug. 31, Pransky noticed a page on Banksy’s official website promoting an NFT auction on the popular market, OpenSea. Despite voicing his misgiving as to the authenticity of the token, Pranksy opted to participate in the public sale and increased the highest bid by 87 Ether ($304,500) to almost 100 ETH.
The bid was accepted, but after a link to the OpenSea auction was removed from Banksy’s website, the NFT investor started to concern the listing could have been fraudulent. Only one hour after sharing the public sale on Twitter, Pranksy posted:
“So my bid of 100 ETH was accepted for the potential #Banksy first #NFT on @opensea. The link was removed from his website so it might have been a really elaborate hoax, my guess is that is what it will be, only time will tell!”
The perpetrators refunded Pranksy a few hours later, sending 97.69 ETH back. Pranksy believes he obtained the refund after figuring out the hacker and following them on Twitter. He told the BBC:
“The refund was completely unexpected, I think the press coverage of the hack plus the fact that I had discovered the hacker and followed him on Twitter could have pushed him into a refund.”
A spokesperson associated with Banksy said: “The artist Banksy has not created any NFT artworks. Any Banksy NFT auctions aren’t affiliated with the artist in any shape or form.” They declined to debate whether Banky’s website had been breached by hackers.
Commenting on the drama, Twitter user “Cryptochild” noted that OpenSea was the only winner from the debacle, having pocketed a 2.5% lower of Pransky’s massive bid.
