A scam meme coin took advantage of the popularity of an Argentine model to steal over 134 ETH in one of the most recent meme coin scams. WandNaraCrypto apparently sounds almost the same as Wandita Nara, an Argentine model with over 2.8 million followers on Twitter
According to Twitter post made by ZachXBT, an on-chan investigator, the fraudsters pulled off the scam by leveraging a name that sounds like that of the model, a gold Twitter checkmark and a Twitter account that actively retweeted the posts of crypto influencers on Twitter.
VIRAL scam despite obvious signs
The crypto project impersonating Wanda Nara on Twitter has now raised over 134 Ethereum worth $250k in a presale, despite showing several signs of a typical crypto scam. The ‘scammers’ named the token VIRAL and announced a shoddy presale program that urged the community to send Ethereum to a random cryptocurrency wallet.
In a poorly worded message announcing the token’s presale, its official Twitter handle with the username @WandaNaraCrypto promised to get “all influencers aboard,” suggesting the creator itself is a public figure.
Presale tweet explains the project’s tokenomics
In the now-deleted presale announcement, the @WandaNaraCrypto handle explained some of the token’s economics, with 70% for presale and liquidity pool, 10% for the CEX listing, 10% on marketing, and the rest remaining a surprise. While that sounds like something a time-constrained 15-year-old came up with, it’s the closest we have to official project documentation so far.
The handle has now changed its username to @ViralTokenErc20, denying any claims of impersonating Wanda Nara. However, we’re unsure how they expect the community to take their claims when the project’s Twitter account literally has “Wanda Nara” in it.
The handlers made sure to block everyone who criticized the shoddy structure, including crypto researcher @ZachXBT who first brought the issue to light.
‘Scammer’ starts refunding investors
After discovering that labeling every valid criticism of the project as FUD isn’t an effective tactic, VIRAL’s handlers announced they’d start refunding all investors and restart from zero. The announcement came in an apology message that came barely hours after the account announced the end of VIRAL’s presale.
The error-laden apology message promised to relaunch VIRAL after taking the time to “REVIEW and IMPROVCE (sic)” the project. In the message, the developers also promised to “work tirelessly to rectify the situation,” which sounds comical, as there’s no situation to rectify in the first place.
As expected, the apology message and refund announcement sparked outrage in the community, even among VIRAL investors. While some expressed anger for not getting any surprise benefits despite making the top 500 investors (as the handlers promised), others wondered how anyone invested in a project by ‘developers’ that couldn’t even write an apology message correctly.
The refund was still not complete at press time.
