Scammer Steals '$135k' Baseball NFT

One owner of one of the most sought after Topps MLB NFTs has been scammed out of their prized possession.

A trade on the AtomicHub (WAX Blockchain) involving the mint #1 Angels Team Cube, featuring both Mike Trout & Shohei Ohtani, was hijacked by a trade bot scam and quickly sold for $10k.

AtomicHub allows users to trade between two accounts without the need to list the NFT for sale on the market. The buyer will load up a 'worthless' NFT with WAX and offer a trade for the seller's asset.

Once accepted, the seller will burn the WAX backed NFT to unlock the WAX and add it to their account balance. You will often see this referred to as a 'WAX backed' deal.

Discord user KPS#5181 had the deal arranged with a well-known collector wallstreetbetsD0Tcom#3487. The intended buyer has amassed a huge Topps MLB collection, purchasing the Legendary Exclusive Mike Trout #1 for $87k and personally buying my very own MLB bundle which included a Legendary Exclusive Pete Alonso #7 for $3300.

The trade deal was sent to the sellers wallet (3wsri.wam), however, at the same time a trade bot pounced with an offer for his asset. This time with nothing in return.

This type of trade bot is designed to cause confusion and hope that the user accepts the wrong deal. This is exactly what happened with KPS inadvertently accepting the scam deal.

KPS accidentally transferred their asset to the scam account.

The baseball NFT was sent to the scam wallet owdbu.wam (we recommend you block this account through the AtomicHub) and quickly transferred to the wallet supermodel12. It was then listed for sale for just under $10k and bought by a legitimate buyer jskse.wam who now owns the asset.

If you own or know the owner of WAX wallet jskse.wam who legitimately bought this NFT from the scammer, please email us at info@arodie.com and we can put them in touch with KPS/wallstreetbetsDOTcom. They are willing to work out a deal to get their asset back.

The sale price is much lower than the suggested Crypto Slam Value. Although the $135k Crypto Slam valuation is high in the current market, it's no doubt this first series MLB NFT is very valuable as the quick $10k sale suggests.

Both seller & buyer have reached out to WAX to help under such grave circumstances. So far the response is that there is nothing that can be done:

Craig has referred the case within WAX to review, but with blockchain's immutable nature, there won't be an easy solution for all parties involved.

The scam NFT account has previously been reported to WAX numerous times on the #report-scams discord channel:

However, no action has been taken and WAX have defended that this specific type of scam is not the intended use of the channel:

We would hope that preventative measures could be taken against a WAX Cloud Wallet after numerous complaints, though it does not seem to be the case.

Can we find an amicable solution here or is all lost?

Of course, there is a lesson here in treble checking all received trade deals through the AtomicHub. Spreading awareness of such scams can at least help to protect others from falling foul of a similar plot.

In most cases, scams like this are only successful with low-value NFTs.

This is an exceptional case, however, and under such exceptional circumstances, we feel we should, as an NFT community, come together to find a solution.

We will reach out to AtomicHub and WAX for comment.