PANews reported on December 9 that according to Cointelegraph, the Brooklyn District Attorney said that his office closed 40 fraudulent NFT market websites after an 85-year-old artist was defrauded of $135,000 by scammers. The Brooklyn District Attorney's Office recently stated that a person posing as an art dealer contacted the victim on LinkedIn and persuaded him to cast his own art on a fake NFT market similar to New York OpenSea; he was later told that he had made $300,000, but in order to get the money, he had to pay $135,000 in "fees", which came from his complete liquidation of retirement accounts, credit card payments and loans; the victim soon realized that he could not get the promised $300,000, which made him "emotionally and financially devastated", and the strategy used in this case led investigators to "discover a network of fraudulent websites dedicated to defrauding artists". In addition, two other artists from Georgia and California were also caught in the same NFT fraud scheme.

The District Attorney’s Virtual Currency Unit tracked the funds to an account at an exchange in Nigeria, where they were “primarily converted into Nigerian currency, eliminating the possibility of recovering the funds.” The unit added that the fake OpenSea website “also appears to be controlled and funded by Nigeria,” and that some now-closed sites prompt visitors to enter their crypto wallet mnemonics, “which would allow scammers to completely empty the user’s web wallet of all contents.” The Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office stressed the importance of using only well-known NFT marketplaces to sell works, and to remain vigilant against phishing attacks via email or phishing websites that appear similar to well-known NFT marketplaces.