ZackXBT recently exposed a scam involving French developer Jolan Lacroix, who embezzled $900,000 from the TICKER token presale on Base. TICKER had raised 877 Ethereum (ETH), equivalent to $3.19 million, with promises of specific token distributions including liquidity provision, presale, airdrops, rewards for early contributors, and a reserve for errors. The project team chose to remain anonymous.

The scam came to light shortly after the Token Generation Event (TGE), when Jolan, responsible for distributing airdrop tokens, sold 13% of the TICKER supply for $900,000 on March 16, betraying the community’s trust. ZackXBT’s investigation began with conversations with another team member, leading to the exposure of Jolan’s actions.

According to ZackXBT, Jolan tried to launder the stolen funds by moving the ETH across different blockchains using Orbiter Finance, Mayan Swap, and Allbridge, from Base to Ethereum, then to Solana. He later confessed to the theft before deactivating his account.

The investigation revealed that Jolan redirected $536,000 of the stolen assets back to Ethereum, investing approximately $161,000 in Milady NFTs and derivatives, while also engaging in meme coin trading, maintaining over $140,000 across several wallets. This incident emphasizes the risks associated with anonymous teams and underscores the importance of due diligence in the digital asset space.

The popularity of the Milady NFT collection has attracted several scammers recently. The collection’s creator, Charlotte Fang, was hacked earlier this week, as a hacker drained millions in ETH from the project’s DAO. The collection also launched its meme coin presale, which reached its $18.6 million goal in just two hours on March 19.

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