First thing to say off the bat is all of this is my fault.
I’m writing this to help warn others. After all, this site is aimed at newbies to help protect them. I just didn’t think I would feel victim to one (or so soon). And such a painful one!
This just happened a couple of hours so all a bit raw.
TLDR: I got scammed out of my Thugbirdz (#2464). I talked to a potential buyer on Discord and we discussed using a 3rd party Escrow. This of course was not true. I sent 100 SOL and obviously got nothing in return, other than a healthy portion of shame, anger and disappointment in myself.
Takeaways: Don’t trust anyone, only use marketplaces, don’t use Escrow on NFTs.
I’ll go through the full story now, with screenshots and all the detail.
Why You Want To Sell Your Thugbird Anyway?
In short, I needed to free up some liquidity and was under some time pressure.
I had no liquidity and wanted to free some up to buy male pigs from Piggy Sol Gang.
Why? I really rate their marketplace, I think the user experience, speed and features are the best out there.
And the fact that they are paying out royalties on male pigs from the whole marketplace was particularly appealing.
I was really fortunate to be able to mint a thug for 3 SOL. So to be able to sell this for 100 SOL + was a huge win.
Of course, it’s still a risk, anything could happen, just look at how the Solana ecosystem has changed in the last few weeks!
I know some will not understand or agree with the strategy here. The possibility of some sort of recurring income from the piggy marketplace was tempting. With Covid I lost 100% of my income as I operated a web publishing business solely in the travel sector. The lesson here was that I needed to diversify my income – and even if it wasn’t much I’m trying to build a few up and not rely on one.
Don’t Rush Into Things
Another factor that contributed me to make some poor choices was feeling under time pressure.
I decided last weekend that I would try and buy pigs before the marketplace launched. I felt at this time their floor price would soar.
I wanted to hold onto the bird and tried to flip a few I had like Skulls and Gloom Punk Club.
I had a small amount of success. But it came to Thursday and the price of pigs was rising so I put the Thug on the marketplaces at 170.
This coincided with a dip in the market and it was hard to sell.
I put a message on the Thug Discord I was selling and Crypto Chad offered me 100. I said I would be after a bit more and he offered the 100 plus two Geckos.
I think that should have been a red flag, that he upped the offer so quickly. I suppose it was his intention to push for a part exchange which would pave the way for the scam.
I also thought it’s a lovely Alien beanie bird and no doubt it will rise in value over time and he may just be super keen (another lesson – don’t assume anything!)
Lesson – Putting myself under time pressure does not help you make wise decisions. I was motivated to sell quickly now to get as many pigs as possible before the price went up further. Perhaps the element of personal greed didn’t help here.
How The Scam Went Down
I woke early this morning and saw pigs were now at 14 SOL.
I also saw a message from CryptoChad.

We confirmed the deal, I had slept on it a couple of days trying to get a pure SOL deal.
Coincidentally, overnight I had got another DM on Discord from someone interested in the bird- Mr Brady.
The plot thickens.
This person offered me 100 SOL but couldn’t compete with the other offer I had.
I got chatting to him and asked him about escrow for NFTs. He said he had tried both Raven and Eagle and they were safe.
Lesson – Don’t trust anyone you just met on Discord!
I’ll dig out the screenshot from this other chat – I deleted it as I was so annoyed but I’m sure I can find it.
Meanwhile CryptoChad ran through the procedure for Escrow using a service called, you can guess, Eagle.
I agreed with the buyer to create a ticket with the Eagle bot.
This then fires up a new Discord. I tell the buyer I need to do some due diligence on this and I start going through the Discord. I see a bunch of reviews of ‘users’ vouching for it. And over 600 members.
Oh and they do this all out of the goodness of their heart – no fee. Another red flag!
The ticket for the Escrow trade gets picked up and their person who will handle the trade.
It’s a fairly simple and sad process from here. This 3rd party confirms the authenticity of his Geckos.
I delay things further doing more reading. Satisfied with what I’ve read on the Discord I bite the (poisonous) bullet.
Poof! The SOL goes and immediately the Eagle discord disconnects me.
Both Chad and the other user block me.
Lesson – I only recently started using Discord (since August). Perhaps if I’d been more familiar with the system I’d be able to judge things better.
What Now?
Well I’m extremely embarrassed for my stupidity and naivety.
I’m upset at I lost 100 SOL. No longer can I invest in the Piggy Sol Gang marketplace.
I no longer have a bird.
I’ve messaged the Thugbird DAO so hopefully they can de-list this Thug but who knows.
I’ve learnt a very expensive lesson, and earlier today I was thinking this whole NFT lark is not for me.
But now I’m determined on getting back on the Solana horse. I also want to spread the word about this scam.
Political Satire: The Art of Criticism and Freedom of Expression
solecoadmin