A hacker just stole $185,000 in crypto from actor Bill Murray that was meant for charity
A few hours after closing Bill Murray’s NFT Auction which raised 119.2 ETH (about $185,000) for charity on Thursday, a hacker stole the funds.
The hacker began emptying Murray’s personal portfolio around 7:00 p.m. ET Thursday, according to string data from Etherscan and Murray’s team details. The stranger also attempted to take non-fungible tokens from the actor’s personal collection.
The high-profile hack shows how even well-known celebrities can fall victim to hackers and thieves. In Bill Murray’s case, however, the actor benefited from a portfolio security team that protected him from the worst of the incident.
Murray’s wallet security team at NFT consultancy Project Venkman stepped in to protect the actor’s NFTs by moving his high-priced JPEGs — including a Damien Hirst NFT, two CryptoPunks, a Pudgy Penguin, a Cool Cat and many Flower Girls – to a pair of safehouse wallets.
The hacker also attempted to steal 800 NFTs from the Bill Murray collection that were in the wallet, although Project Venkman said it foiled that attempt by moving those NFTs to a safehouse as well. They said they ran a script to automatically move the NFTs to safety.
They were less successful in protecting the funds. A representative confirmed that the hacker got away with 119.2 ETH Murray had raised the day before for a charity auction. The attacker sent the stolen funds to a wallet address linked to the Binance crypto exchange and Unionchain.ai, according to Murray’s team. The culprit has not yet been identified.
Although the original ETH is gone, a second from the auction, Coinbase user Accident72sent 120 ETH (about $187,500) to Chive Charities to replace what was lost, a market representative told CoinDesk.
Murray’s team says they have filed a police report and are working with cryptanalysis firm Chainalysis to bring the attacker to justice. Chainalysis did not immediately respond to CoinDesk.
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