Share this article
DOJ Charges Moroccan Man With Stealing $450K in OpenSea Spoofing Scam
Officials allege the man set up a lookalike website based on the popular NFT marketplace to steal victims' digital art collectibles.
Updated Jul 11, 2023, 12:27 a.m. Published Jul 10, 2023, 7:54 p.m.
U.S. authorities have indicted a man accused of stealing $450,000 worth of cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens (NFTs), the U.S. Attorney's Office said in a statement Monday.
The indictment, issued by the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, alleges Soufiane Oulahyane, a Moroccan national, operated a look-alike website of popular NFT marketplace OpenSea to obtain unauthorized access to digital assets and NFTs in a cybercrime technique known as "spoofing."
STORY CONTINUES BELOW
Oulahyane faces multiple counts of wire fraud, the use of an unauthorized access device for the alleged crime and aggravated identity theft, which occurred in September 2021.
"Oulahyane adapted [an] old tool for use in a new and developing arena – the crypto space," U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said in a statement.
The alleged scammer used his fake OpenSea site to lure a Manhattan NFT owner to register with it and hand over the seed phrase to his digital wallet, which Oulahyane then used to transfer cryptocurrency and a number of NFTs to his control and sell them. Those NFTs included one from the "Bored Ape Yacht Club" series worth roughly $92,000 at publication time.
Oulahyane is now in custody in Morocco. He could face up to 47 years in prison if found guilty of the charges.
Read more: This Is How Scammers Can Drain Your Crypto Wallet
More For You
What to know:
- As of October 2025, GoPlus has generated $4.7M in total revenue across its product lines. The GoPlus App is the primary revenue driver, contributing $2.5M (approx. 53%), followed by the SafeToken Protocol at $1.7M.
- GoPlus Intelligence's Token Security API averaged 717 million monthly calls year-to-date in 2025 , with a peak of nearly 1 billion calls in February 2025. Total blockchain-level requests, including transaction simulations, averaged an additional 350 million per month.
- Since its January 2025 launch , the $GPS token has registered over $5B in total spot volume and $10B in derivatives volume in 2025. Monthly spot volume peaked in March 2025 at over $1.1B , while derivatives volume peaked the same month at over $4B.
More For You
State of Crypto: Wrapping Up the Month
Congress continues to make progress on crypto issues but things are moving slowly.
Top Stories
