Nike’s NFT Brand RTFKT COO Gets Hacked, Loses Nearly $200,000 in NFTs – Here’s What Happened

RTFKT COO Nikhil Gopalani has fallen victim to a “clever” phishing scheme that drained almost $200,000 worth of NFTs from his wallet.

In a Tuesday tweet, Gopalani said that he lost his collection of NFTs, which included Clone X NFTs and items from other collections, to a scammer in an apparent phishing attack. 

Hey Clone X community – I was hacked by a clever Phisher (same phone # as apple ID) & sold all my clone x / some other nfts… Obviously pretty upset and hurt by this and I havent really been able to move all day. Hope people who bought my clones love them (being positive)

— Nikhil Gopalani (@Nikgopalani) January 3, 2023

As of now, the wallet that appears to be linked to Gopalani has lost all its NFTs except for one: a Death Row Records NFT of the “Clone X Theme Song” worth about $59. 

OpenSea data further shows that two wallets belonging to the attacker have stolen 19 CloneX NFTs worth over $138,000 combined, 18 RTKFT Space Pods (over $6,300 total), 17 Loot Pods ($6,200), 11 CryptoKicks ($3,000), 19 RTFKT Animus Eggs ($20,200), and more from Gopalani’s wallet.

When asked about the details of the hack, RTFKT CTO Samuel Cardillo said they can’t go into details for “legal purposes.” He added:

“All I can say is: be aware that companies such as Microsoft, Apple, … will never ask you for your password, your private key nor any other forms of private information via phone nor emails.”

Cardillo rejected an accusation that his response was “very corporate” and implied that a legal investigation may be underway, stating on Twitter that “a lawful agency” needed to be able to “do an investigation properly” as the reason why further details could not be shared.

RTFKT is a virtual sneakers company that creates NFTs and digital sneakers for the metaverse that was acquired by Nike in December 2021. Nike also launched .SWOOSH, a Web3 platform that will be used to launch virtual apparel like t-shirts and sneakers for avatars, in November last year. 

NFT Scams Reach Record Level in 2022

There was a steep rise in the number of phishing attempts targeting the NFT community members in 2022 amid a substantial increase in the amount of DeFi hacks. 

As reported, the popular NFT collection Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) lost ETH 200 worth of digital assets in an exploit in early June. NFT influencer Zeneca and NFT registration platform PREMINT also fell victim to hacks in mid-July.

In mid-August, in a bid to fight spammers, Solana wallet provider Phantom announced a new feature that will burn spam NFTs sent by scammers.