On February 20, a hacker stole around $2 million worth of crypto assets from the genesis protocol of the decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol Hope Finance as it was being launched. The thief claimed everything from the genesis protocol.
According to a report from the blockchain security company Peckshield, the scammer moved 1095 ether (ETH) via Tornado Cash’s mixing protocol. Hope Finance posted an image of the suspect together with a voter’s card and said that the hacker who perpetrated the fraud against its community was a Nigerian citizen called Ugwoke Pascal Chukwuebuka from PortHarcourt Rivers State.
On the other hand, members of the cryptocurrency community have made allegations that Hope Finance was a rug pull. A rug pull is a kind of crypto scam in which criminals mislead the public in order to obtain money and then rapidly run off with the digital tokens invested by investors.
In response to the tweet sent by Hope Finance, a person named Markuu on Twitter said that he believes the identification card has been tampered with, suggesting that it may not even be authentic.
He added that:
“They also have services where they pay people to dox. It’s not very likely that’s the person who actually took everyone’s money unfortunately. Did nobody on Hope Finance team have video calls with the lead dev????”
The company answered that unfortunately, no. They also said that after the successful launch, they had a conversation about his dox, but it appears that he overplays even his own staff.
Over the course of the last year, investors in cryptocurrencies have lost billions of dollars due to the proliferation of DeFi exploits.
