Bill Murray NFT Hack: Funds Worth $185,000 Stolen After Charity Auction

The lost funds have been replaced by a Coinbase user named Mishap72.

Bill Murray, the veteran Hollywood actor known for movies such as “Ghostbusters”, “Groundhog Day”, and “Lost in Translation”, last week held an auction for his non-fungible token (NFT) collection, titled Bill Murray 1000, proceeds from which was planned to be donated to charity. However, hours after the auction wrapped up last week, a hacker stole the accumulated funds, in tune of $185,000, draining money from Murray’s personal wallet on Thursday, on-chain data and details from Murray’s own team showed. 

The auction featured a 1/1 collectible ticket that will grant the winning bidder a chance to grab some beer with the actor. The Bill Murray 1000 collection has been created by The Shack, in partnership with Coinbase’s own NFT marketplace. The cheapest NFT on the collection was listed at ETH 11, or roughly $17,000. Out of the 1,000 NFTs, 82 have been released so far. Coinbase user Brant Boersma won the bidding for the 1/1 ticket and will have the beer date with Murray painted on canvas by the collection’s artist David Grizzle. 

As per on-chain data from Etherscan, at around 7pm ET on Thursday, a hacker started draining the funds from Murray’s personal wallet. As reported by CoinDesk, the individual tried to steal NFTs from the Bill Murray 1000 collection as well as Murray’s personal collection as well.

However, the attempt was thwarted by NFT consultancy Project Venkman’s wallet security team. Some high-valued artwork — including the likes of two CryptoPunks, a Pudgy Penguin, and more — were transferred to a pair of safehouse wallets. 

A Project Venkman representative reportedly confirmed an amount of ETH 119.2 (roughly $185,000) was stolen by the hacker. As per Murray’s team, the yet-unidentified hacker transferred the stolen funds to Binance and Unionchain.ai exchanges. The team said that a police report has been filed and it is working closely with Chainalysis crypto firm to identify the hacker. 

Given the popularity of the charity auction, a Coinbase representative reportedly told CoinDesk that a user, Mishap72, has donated ETH 120 (roughly $120,000) to Chive Charities to deal with the losses.

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