Law enforcement authorities in India mistakenly detained the wrong person in connection with a 2022 scam involving the theft of over $1 million worth of Bored Ape non-fungible tokens (NFTs), as revealed by cybersecurity researcher ZachXBT. In a recent post on X, ZachXBT disclosed that he had identified the wallet responsible for the scam, which was linked to a now-deleted X account. However, in 2023, law enforcement apprehended Sam Curry, a former security researcher at Yuga Labs, the company behind the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT collection, as a suspect in the incident. ZachXBT expressed disappointment at the detention of the security researcher, stressing that stronger leads exist pointing to the actual threat actor responsible for the theft. The anonymous attacker stole 14 Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs in December 2022, each valued at around $86,000 at the time, based on data from CoinSlam. ZachXBT mentioned that law enforcement mistakenly associated Curry with the theft by reviewing logs from OpenSea, tracing it back to Curry’s home IP address. In actuality, Curry had been investigating the theft in his security role at Yuga Labs and had utilized a private key discovered in the website’s JavaScript by the threat actor. ZachXBT used forensic tracing techniques, including tracking fund movements through Tornado, an Ethereum mixer, to identify a person he believes to be a probable suspect in the 2022 theft. He recommended that law enforcement officials seek data from the individual’s social media accounts and scrutinize on-chain transactions associated with the alleged wallet. The Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT collection, launched in 2021, is one of the most valuable NFT collections, with a total market capitalization exceeding $300 million, according to data from CoinGecko. As of May 9, individual Bored Ape NFTs were trading for approximately $30,000 each on the OpenSea NFT marketplace, with varying prices due to unique characteristics.