The head of The Sandbox was hacked by hackers and allegedly stole cryptocurrency from his subscribers

Arthur Madrid, co-founder and CEO of The Sandbox metaverse, fell victim to a hack of his Twitter account on May 26. According to Madrid’s post, which was presumably published after his account had been restored, the attacker used his account to advertise a fraudulent airdrop.

Four hours before Madrid’s post, The Sandbox’s official Twitter account also warned that a fraudster had taken control of the account and was spreading a «fraudulent link to a fake SAND token airdrop.»

⚠️ Our CEO & Co-Founder Arthur Madrid’s Twitter account has been hacked ⚠️

The hacker is posting a scam/phishing link for a fake airdrop of SAND tokens.

⛔️Do NOT click on the link and instead report the post so it is blocked.

We’re working on getting the site down and fix… pic.twitter.com/sOqzAV5OUT

— The Sandbox (@TheSandboxGame) May 26, 2023

The message included a screenshot of an allegedly fraudulent post that advertised the SAND token airdrop and urged users to «check your reward staking capability» by redirecting users to a website with a different URL than the official one. The Sandbox team stated that they are «working to get the site shut down as soon as possible.» It seems they have succeeded — the URL of the fraudulent project is currently displaying a 404 error. The extent of the damage caused to Arthur Madrid’s subscribers is still unknown, as well as whether the company is going to compensate for the losses.

Profile hacking and phishing attacks have become a frequent problem in the cryptocurrency community. Earlier on May 19, it was reported that a so-called «fraud service» called Inferno Drainer was operating on Telegram, hiring website developers to create hundreds of such fraudulent sites. By the time it was discovered, it had stolen nearly $ 6 million from users.