Footballer Paul Pogba promoted an NFT project, which he shared with his millions of Twitter followers. Since then, the project has fallen into oblivion. The founders are accused of having gone with the fund, stealing money from investors.
What is the link between the star footballer of the France team Paul Pogba and ruined workers? The answer is unfortunately not encouraging: an NFT project that turned into a scam. This is the conclusion of a survey published on March 1, 2023 in the sports media The Athletic. Journalist Joey D’Urso, who led the investigation, interviewed victims of CryptoDragon, a project that paid the midfielder to advertise — and led to the ruin of some of his fans.
It is important to clarify that Paul Pogba is not directly linked to the project. However, he was paid to advertise it on his Twitter account, as can be seen with the presence of the hashtag #Ad (advertisement, in English) in one of his tweets.
As the journalist writes, it’s not fair to focus on Paul Pogba. Many other players promoted scams that ruined football fans. “Joey D’Urso also blames” sites like Forbes, Yahoo Finance and Bloomberg, which shared their press release without verifying what the projects are “. ” I’ve seen many examples like this, complete scams, linking to these articles to make them appear believable. »
A project of “NFT dragons” supported by Paul Pogba
The beginning of the story dates back to November 15, 2021, when Paul Pogba shared a short video of him on his Twitter account. ” I am delighted to announce my partnership with the phenomenal Cryptodragon project “, can we hear him say in the video, in which he also speaks of a sales record which would have been established by the carriers of the project. “ This is my first time buying an NFT, it’s huge. I will have dragon eggs, and I will be the father of dragons “, he explains with a smile.
The video, which now has almost 200,000 views, has motivated a large number of people to invest in the project. Berat Kurnza, one of the victims who spoke to the journalist, says he decided to invest, together with his cousin, ” mostly because of Paul Pogba. ” We thought he knew the people behind the project, that it was something legitimate. »
Shortly after the publication of the tweet, at the end of 2021, the project took off. According to The Athletic and data from OpenSea, the popular NFT auction site, CryptoDragons are selling at a premium: millions of dollars have been invested in the collection.
CryptoDragons were meant to be part of a larger scheme: users would buy NFTs of dragon eggs, which would eventually hatch. They could then face other dragons in battle, or choose to do ” mate » their dragons in order to give birth to others.
Despite the creators’ promises, NFTs are rapidly losing value. While, in his video, Paul Pogba talks about an NFT sold for more than thirty ETH (the cryptocurrency associated with the Ethereum blockchain), in April 2022, a few months later, the average price of an sale is 0.6 ETH. A disastrous drop for investors, like Berat Kurnaz. He says he invested and lost nearly $2,000, the equivalent of three months’ salary for him. He is not the only one: the journalist spoke to other victims, who did not wish to be named, and lost between 6,000 and 24,000 dollars.
The founders of the CryptoDragons project have disappeared
Today, the project’s Twitter account has not been active for months. The last message dates from August 2022: the creators of the project announce a collaboration with the Polygon blockchain. Since then, radio silence on the site. Same thing on the project’s Discord group, where the last message from a moderator dates from September, and in which it is just a question of ” technical issues that the site would encounter.
Since then, on the Discord, many people have expressed their disappointment. They consider it to be a rug sweater », a type of scam where the creators of a project leave with the fund, leaving behind them an entire community caught off guard.
According to a person interviewed in the survey, around February, the creators of the project would have ” withdrawn 800 ETH “, equivalent at that time to 2 million dollars. Nari, a Canadian often presented as one of the co-founders of the project on Twitter, has since been lost. Interviews with her have reportedly been deleted from YouTube, reports The Athletic.
NFT scams have become commonplace. With the explosion of their popularity in 2021, these tokens have attracted a whole crowd of curious people looking to make a quick buck. But the NFT environment has also been a golden opportunity for scammers, who have set up numerous fraudulent schemes to attract investment from users who are sometimes uninformed about the risks and in search of profit.
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