OpenSea denies link between former employee and AnubisDAO rug pull

NFT platform OpenSea said it has no evidence of involvement by a former employee in the AnubisDAO project rug pull scheme in 2021. Cointelegraph reports.

In a thread dated October 6, the X account NFT Ethics tagged OpenSea, asking OpenSea to respond to allegations that the former company manager is allegedly connected to the alias Sisyphus and involved in “various dubious business operations.”

Researchers from NFT Ethics, as well as Lookonchain analysts, claim a key role of the former employee in promoting AnubisDAO among investors. Shortly before the planned distribution of ANKH tokens, all funds raised in ETH totaling about $60 million were transferred to external wallets.

In the thread, NFT Ethics authors attempted to argue that Sisyphus’s role in the fraudulent scheme was planned by other developers, and funds were laundered through the meme token PEPE.

A OpenSea spokesperson told the publication that they know nothing of the former employee’s involvement in any such scams.

“[He] is a former employee who left the company in June 2023. At OpenSea he had limited capabilities, he worked in a non-managerial role. We know nothing about his involvement in the projects in question,” he said.

OpenSea, however, acknowledged that this concerns his alleged activity before joining the platform.

The allegations were also rejected by the well-known on-chain sleuth ZachXBT. In his statement, the NFT Ethics thread was “one of the most midcurve things I have read.”

The analyst added that much of the topic is based on assumptions, using “unrelated events without facts.” ZachXBT noted that Sisyphus became the only person to contact authorities 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 at fault for gross negligence and deceit regarding the multisignature of the Anubis team? Absolutely 100%. For victims, a civil suit is probably possible. Yet 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 fraud are people with the aliases Beerus and Ersan. The latter in 2023 received on his wallet “an eight-figure amount in dollars” in ETH via Tornado Cash, the analyst noted.

In the third quarter Web3-ecosystem lost $685.5 million due to hacks and scams. Of the total, $22.7 million was attributed to 27 scam cases.