Investors in a cryptocurrency called Monkey Jizz are posting on social media that they’ve been scammed by the project’s developer after a token sale.
Monkey Jizz’s scam was a rug pull, in which a project attracts investors, promises to release a bunch of products, and then suddenly makes off with investor funds while crashing the value of the underlying token. According to screenshots shared on social media on Sunday, Monkey Jizz’s rug pull also had the added step of introducing a 94.9 percent sell fee for any holders of $MJIZZ, disincentivizing any panic selling that might diminish the rug pull’s profitability.
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“Are you ready to enter the jungle,” the honeypot’s website, monkeyjizz.life, and its Twitter account read before going offline. The project promised “improved jizzing speeds,” noted that every investor would get a cut of transactions sent directly to their wallets, and promised to one day develop a game called “Monkey Business.” The scam featured a Telegram group to help boost the coin ahead of the rug pull. “$MJIZZ is here to take over the DeFi Jungle with Monkey Business, Collectible NFTs, Jizz Swap + Banana Wallet, JizzPad and much more!” its Telegram group reads.
$MJIZZ advertised itself as being safer than other projects. “We understand everyone’s concerns and have been victims of scams ourselves in the past; we get it,” the website’s FAQ reads.
The project offered investors a few things to emphasize the project as a safe bet: a doxxed “monkey master” named Cal whose photo is featured on the website (giving legitimacy because there was an identifiable human behind the project); marketing and development costs coming out of “a locked wallet”; a dynamic “anti-poacher system” to adjust fees and stop hoarding and exploitation of supply; and community votes on “important matters.”
To some, the cryptoproject seemed legitimate as it had a presale listed on token launch platform PinkSale and had done a now-private YouTube AMA with Travlaad Crypto—a crypto influencer who pitches themselves as “CEO of the most transparent #Crypto AMA Venue on Telegram.”
“You are a little deluded aren’t you, They KYC’d with pinksale and live doxxed to us, and still scammed, we vet everything we post and they had a KYC with pinksale which means their details can be sent to the authorities,” Travlaad Crypto tweeted to a user who said they got scammed by Monkey Jizz. “Don’t @ me.”
According to blockchain records, on Sunday the address controlling the Monkey Jizz token contract transferred around 500 Binance Coin ($270,315) out using Tornado.Cash, a service for private cryptocurrency transfers. While most of Monkey Jizz’s presence online has been scrubbed—its website is down, Twitter deleted, developer gone with the wind, and Telegram group inactive—there are still interesting traces left online.
On Reddit, a buzzword filled post from two months ago advertises an $MJIZZ launch back in September. “Multiple safeguards are in place to protect the monkey fam,” promises the Reddit post. It also promises a host of offerings such as a financial audit, influencer marketing, donations to Amazon Watch, an air drop named “Jizz Drop Numero Uno,” NFT giveaways, a videogame, and more.
Now, scorned investors are trying to track down the developer who was the face of the Monkey Jizz project by comparing the face of the person on the website to social media photos. Some users believe they’ve traced him to a specific Facebook account belonging to a person who is seemingly in Thailand; “Thousands of people scammed because they trusted this bald Fool,” one poster commented under a photo of the person on a beach emblazoned with the watermark of a Thai nightclub.