Brooklyn painter, 85, loses retirement savings to NFT scam after taking the bait on LinkedIn

Reports of an 85-year-old professional painter being scammed led to the seizure of 40 fraudulent NFT "art marketplaces."

The Brooklyn District Attorney's Office stated that after investigators identified websites spoofing legitimate NFT (non-fungible token) marketplaces, the domains were seized and redirected to a seizure page with a warning message.

According to the announcement, the investigation began after the children of the painter from Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, reported last May that their father had been deceived by an online scammer posing as an art dealer.

Here’s how it happened:

The painter was contacted via LinkedIn by a "dealer" for "OpenSea/Private Mint." OpenSea is a major NFT platform. The scammer convinced the victim to sign a contract on the fake website to convert the painter's art into NFTs for sale.

Later, the criminal claimed to have earned more than $300,000 in bitcoin (BTC) and used the usual tactic of asking for a huge fee of $135,000 to access the funds. The painter liquidated his entire individual retirement account to pay the fee, only to realize later that he had been scammed and would not receive the promised $300,000.

The District Attorney’s Virtual Currency Unit traced the paid "fee," which was cashed out for Nigerian currency at a crypto exchange, making it difficult to recover the lost funds. The investigation also revealed that the fake website was controlled from Nigeria.

Two other artists from California and Georgia were also identified as victims of scam NFT marketplaces. Some scammers even required their unsuspecting victims to input their crypto wallet seed words into the fake websites. Seed words are combinations of 12–24 words that give access to a crypto wallet. Users are urged never to enter their seed words online (and keep them offline), as no legitimate crypto business will ask for them.

Meanwhile, the district attorney also offered advice on how to stay safe from such scammers, such as verifying the authenticity of online art and NFT dealers before engaging with them and ensuring the use of legitimate, not fake, NFT marketplaces.

"If it seems too good to be true, it likely is. Do your own research and seek opinions from fellow artists," the attorney concluded.