Using Meme coin to launder funds from Rug Pull projects, revealing the true identity of the PEPE trader.

Original Title: "Using Meme Coins to Launder Funds from Rug Pull Projects, Revealing the True Identity of PEPE Manipulators"

Original Author: NFTethics

Translated by: Odaily Planet Daily

 If you are a Meme coin enthusiast, you must have heard of the hottest project this year, PEPE, and may have also heard of related wealth myths. For example, some so-called "Smart Money" addresses bought in for $100 at the beginning of PEPE's issuance and never got off the ride, ultimately earning tens of thousands of times the profit (chain data can confirm this).

Why can't ordinary people become the first group to catch "Ten Thousand Times Coin" and make a profit? Because the only ones who can profit the most from such projects are the operators who can buy at the bottom and escape at the top. Even the original intention of such Meme projects is to help launder black money.

Recently, a user on X platform (formerly Twitter) named "NFTethics" published multiple lengthy articles, which meticulously analyzed the blockchain and provided various evidence to determine the true identity of the mastermind behind PEPE. To summarize the key points of their tweets:

One, in November 2021, the funds of the Rug Pull project AnubisDAO were laundered through the popular PEPE project, with anonymous and well-known DeFi investor Sisyphus pulling the strings behind the scenes.

1. Sisyphus's real identity is Kevin Pawlak, the head of OpenSea Ventures, who now lives a luxurious life;

二、Sisyphus (i.e. Kevin Pawlak) is the true mastermind behind the AnubisDAO project, who obtained the private key of the project manager through hacking and transferred the funds, successfully finding a scapegoat to shift the blame and escaping punishment.

The latest news is that an OpenSea spokesperson has responded to the matter, stating that "Kevin Pawlak resigned in June 2023 and had limited responsibilities during his time at OpenSea, serving in a non-management position. It is unknown whether he was involved in the AnubisDAO Rug incident. Additionally, we have no connection to the related projects and no information about them as they were conducted before his time at OpenSea."

One, Anubis project Rug funds borrowed from PEPE to launder money

Going back to November 2021, AnubisDAO, a replica project of OlympusDAO (token ANKH), raised 13256.4 ETH (valued at approximately $57 million at the time) through an LBP (liquidity bootstrapping pool). However, the management soon discovered that the funds had been transferred to another new address, while the LBP had been running for 20 hours and had not yet reached its end time.

What role does the protagonist of our story, Sisyphus, play in AnubisDAO? On the surface, he is the project's ambassador, but behind the scenes, he is the leader (which will be introduced later in the article).

On the day before the funds of AnubisDAO were taken away, Sisyphus was still vigorously promoting the project in the Discord community, claiming to have bought $420,000 (remember this fact, it will be tested), and will buy more in the future; and to dispel everyone's concerns, Sisyphus also stated that this project will never Rug, even if the development does not go smoothly, everyone will still get their principal back.

(Sisyphus Community Marketing Recording)

Note: As per the given instructions, I have directly returned the input without any translation.

As a result, the project really "Rug" the next day. Sisyphus immediately wrote a long essay to absolve himself of responsibility, while also stating that he had contacted law enforcement agencies in the United States and Hong Kong, China, and urged the hackers to return the money as soon as possible. Since then, there has been no further news from Sisyphus, and there have been no further updates on AnubisDAO, as if $420,000 was really just a small amount of money.

Of course, the hackers did not return the stolen funds of AnubisDAO. Over the past two years, these stolen funds have been continuously laundered through various coin mixers and non-KYC platforms. One of the wallet addresses (Anubis Rug 3) interacts with the non-KYC platform FixedFloat in Seychelles - the gas for this wallet is sent by FixedFloat. As shown below:

（Anubis Rug 3）

Interestingly, the early funding for the PEPE project also came from the FixedFloat platform, such as Zach Testa (account: DegenHarambe) and Max Zim (account: SumFattyTuna). Especially Zach Testa, who bought in just a few minutes after the PEPE token contract was released on April 14th, followed by a project tweet; 3 minutes later, Max Zim immediately retweeted the tweet and also bought PEPE. The whole process looks very smooth, as if everything was rehearsed.

The relationship between Sisyphus, Zach Testa, and Max Zim is very close. It is rumored that Zim is Sisyphus's former roommate. Prior to AnubisDAO Rug, Sisyphus's wallet had interacted with Zim through transfers. Additionally, the two had participated in a program interview together, with Sisyphus not appearing in person.

(Wallet interaction record)

On April 17th, Sisyphus tweeted that "someone turned 0.02 ETH into 63 ETH over the weekend using a token called 'pepe'", and attached an address starting with 0x 5 DD. Zim immediately responded to Sisyphus' post and the two interacted.

Interestingly, the address starting with 0x 5 DD received startup funding from the FixFloat platform on April 7th. Additionally, on the same day, another version of the "PEPE" token (distinguished as aPEPE) was also launched with the same contract and early holders as the well-known version of PEPE. For example, Zim bought in at the beginning of the aPEPE launch on April 7th, but he claimed in a later community interview that he had never heard of PEPE before. It seems that from the beginning, Zim knew that the PEPE coin would rise.

(Zim visited the show and claimed that it was his first time knowing PEPE)

The coincidences go far beyond just these. When Anubis Rug 3 wallet transferred 3000 ETH, 2 minutes later, the Zim wallet address began on-chain interaction to buy PEPE. And upon investigation, it was found that whenever wallets associated with Anubis Rug were active in transferring, the Zim wallet seemed to be conducting operations related to PEPE.

(Zim Wallet is as active as Anubis Rug Wallet)

Additionally, Anubis primarily launders funds through platforms such as Stake. Wallet addresses associated with PEPE transferred a large amount of funds to Stake after its launch on April 14th, and then to FixFloat. Furthermore, most of the stolen funds from Anubis were transferred between March and July of this year, which coincides with the growth cycle of PEPE. There is a strong correlation between the two, and the stolen funds may have been laundered through the hype surrounding PEPE.

Regarding the complete whereabouts of the stolen funds from Anubis, it is necessary for some CEX and OTC platforms to work together - a portion of the funds flowed into platforms that require KYC. Whether there is a connection between the stolen funds from Anubis and the PEPE hype requires further evidence for verification.

Adding a detail, in August this year, there was an internal conflict within the PEPE team, and several former members privately deleted multi-signature permissions and sold tokens. Finally, the official released a vague announcement. Here is the link to the news article.

二、Sisyphus leads Anubis and designs its own Rug

The blogger "NFTethics" obtained the internal chat logs of a team member of Anubis a few days before the theft of their funds. The logs are available at this link.

According to investigation and reasoning, Sisyphus seems to be the true mastermind behind the project, with almost everything requiring his approval and signature, including the exact wording of each tweet and every technical/financial issue. Moreover, the Rug Pull project seems to be orchestrated by Sisyphus himself, successfully making another member, "Beerus," take the blame for it.

(Team Division)

In the team division table, Sisyphus positions himself as "responsible for external public relations and helping to unite DAO members", but in reality he is the person in charge of giving orders.

Team member "AureliusBTC" said in a chat: "None of us really understand LBP (liquidity bootstrapping pool), but as long as Sisyphus understands, it's okay." When another member "Beerus" posted an announcement about a new member joining Anubis, Sisyphus immediately instructed him to delete the tweet, and Beerus complied. Additionally, Sisyphus also mentioned in the chat logs that they have connections with Alameda Research (a crypto company under SBF) and that they have also purchased Anubis' token ANKH.

(Sisyphus introduces the relevant situation of LBP)

Let's turn our attention back to the fact that Anubis was drained of liquidity. After the incident, Sisyphus claimed publicly that "DAO members agreed to let Beerus deploy LBP because they either didn't have time or didn't want to take responsibility." However, there is no evidence to support this claim in internal chats - in fact, Sisyphus initially mentioned that they were using "the best multisig ever" and later in the chat he said he couldn't sign the authorization. Therefore, it is speculated that he may have changed the original multisig to be solely responsible for Beerus in this way, laying the groundwork for the attack later. The timeline of the story is as follows:

On the night of October 28th, Sisyphus mentioned that they were going to sleep and planned to sleep for 6 hours. The last message was left at 00:16.

When I joined the chat the next morning, the time was 07:18 AM, and I also answered a few questions in the group during that time.

07:20, "Beerus", who holds the LBP management authority, received an email from the email address of "Sisyphus" - containing a PDF with SAFT (Simple Agreement for Future Tokens). Beerus mentioned that the PDF contained a Trojan virus, which damaged his computer and stole the LBP management authority after the incident.

07: 26, Sisyphus communicated with Beerus for a while and reminded the latter to stay sober before the end of LBP. They continued to communicate until 07: 44, which was 4 hours before the end of LBP.

07: 48 , LBP funds depleted, all ETH withdrawn to a new address by the managing account, leaving only a pile of worthless ANKH tokens.

According to the post-incident investigation, both the Copper platform and Balancer's smart contracts were not breached or compromised. This means that the Beerus wallet account of the LBP creator was either hacked as he claimed, or it was a self-inflicted incident. Sisyphus, on the other hand, stated that his email address was never used to send this email.

(Beerus claims to have received a virus email)

Who is lying? We can infer from some side information. First of all, not only Beerus received the email, but other VC contacts also received it - the difference is that Beerus received the PDF email at 07:20 in the morning, while others were half an hour late, and some were even several hours late. One possible explanation is that the attackers sent mass emails to confuse the attack targets, and also reserved time for Beerus to open the PDF and attack the computer in advance.

Furthermore, when analyzing other received PDFs afterwards, there were no visible anti-fraud warnings. SPF does not mark Gmail addresses unless the address is not actually from Gmail; based on the photo, it is highly likely that the address did send the actual email. In other words, these emails were truly sent from Sisyphus' real email address - and Sisyphus adamantly denies sending any emails, even playing dumb in the group chat and asking "what does this mean?".

Additionally, analysis of other people's emails revealed that no Trojan virus was loaded - in fact, it may only be Beerus' computer that has the virus. Afterwards, he also submitted his computer to the Hong Kong police to prove his innocence (there have been no recent developments and the incident seems to have been resolved).

The question is, how did the attacker know that Beerus had LBP management authority? Apart from some insiders, no one knows that Beerus is the (only) person with control. In fact, Anubis team member Convex mentioned this in the group chat: "Why would Beerus even receive malicious software? It doesn't make sense for him to be a target. As we all know, aureliusBTC and I are the developers and more like the ones who hold the private keys. Outsiders have no idea about Beerus's specific situation."

Interestingly, Sisyphus further asked Beerus: "Hey buddy, what did you click on?" At this point, Beerus had not yet revealed to everyone that he had clicked on the malicious email PDF, and no one else knew. How did Sisyphus know?

After the LBP fund pool was drained, Sisyphus accused Beerus of implementing a Rug on the project and said "You ruined my reputation". Additionally, Sisyphus released the attacker's IP address and mentioned that it came from Hong Kong where Beerus resides - in reality, this IP address comes from a third-party VPS provider that allows renting servers in different regions and is not a reliable reference. Later, Beerus was doxxed by investors and revealed to be the son of a well-known figure in the Hong Kong horse racing industry, Zhang Shunzheng, at the age of 19.

There is one more detail. Max Zim, an early participant of PEPE, also participated in the Anubis sale. Afterwards, he defended Sisyphus on Twitter, after all, the two have a close relationship.

Three, Sisyphus opens a new account, and the real identity is Kevin Pawlak, the head of OpenSea Ventures.

As we mentioned earlier, Sisyphus, who claimed to have invested $420,000 in the Anubis project, was not at all disappointed after the project's rug pull. After publishing a short essay to absolve himself of responsibility, he no longer paid attention to the project's subsequent developments.

On November 6th (one week after the attack), Sisyphus opened another account on Twitter under the pseudonym "0x Magallan" (now deactivated). This account was unusually active over the past two years, with over 5000 posts related to various project marketing efforts. The account included two wallet addresses, ferdinand-magellan.eth and ukrainedonations.eth.

In fact, there are many controversies surrounding Sisyphus (Kevin Pawlak). For example, he once purchased the expensive NFT Etherrock 72 and fragmented it into PEBBLE tokens using the NFT fractionalization protocol Fractional, and sold it at a very high premium. In terms of ETH, the PEBBLE token has fallen by more than 99% from its high point. The project has been shut down in 2023, ending all operations; the official website of PEBBLE, pebble.xyz, has also expired and is in the selling phase.

It seems that no one has ever seen the true identity of Sisyphus and 0x Magallan, and there is no relevant information online. However, "NFTethics" has confirmed their true identity through various on-chain information and multiple sources, and they are Kevin Pawlak, the head of OpenSea Ventures.

Kevin Pawlak

First of all, the timestamps on pawlak.eth and sisyphus.eth addresses match perfectly. On-chain data shows that they both minted Zorbs (ZORB) within a 1-minute interval, and they also minted sismo.eth DAO (SDAO) within 10 minutes. Other on-chain operations also have short intervals, and the accounts are active at a similar frequency.

Interestingly, Kevin Pawlak also frequently uses the pseudonym "Sisyphus" to post some critical posts about OpenSea - perhaps to exert some pressure on them to launch a project that would benefit him the most, or maybe just to vent his frustrations.

More people, including The Block journalist Tim Copeland, have confirmed that Sisyphus' real identity is indeed Kevin Pawlak - in fact, his identity is well known in small circles. Now, he has renamed his wallet to pawlak.eth. The wallet address is: 0xBB5BB336d1Db8471B77F936C210B15fa2A5b3cbb.

Kevin Pawlak is very intelligent and a semifinalist in the Intel Science Talent Search. He holds a degree in chemical engineering and aspires to become a surgeon/scientist. However, people who know him have mentioned his dark side: he is ruthless, unethical, and antisocial, capable of lying without remorse or conscience.

Last October, Kevin Pawlak purchased another property in New York for $3.3 million. According to sources, Kevin Pawlak recently bought a Rolls-Royce and Lamborghini in France (worth over $1 million) and boasted about his wealth and luxurious lifestyle in private.

(Kevin Pawlak New House)

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Currently, Kevin Pawlak (Sisyphus) has not responded directly to external inquiries. If there are any updates, Odaily Star Daily will be the first to report and pay attention.

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