Online Scammers, Part 2

NFTs... Non-Fungible Token. Huh?

In May of 2014 a Charleston-based digital artist named Kevin McCoy created and sold the first-known NFT for a whopping $1.5 million at a Sotheby's auction. And suddenly the whole world was nuts about NFTs. But what are they and how are they being used to scam?

Full disclosure, I still don't completely get NFTs, and I am probably not 100% accurate in the workings of how they're done. But, NFTs essentially are a high res digital file of a work of art. In McCoy's case (and the intended purpose of NFTs) is there's a single high res digital piece with a single buyer... and that's it. It cannot be reproduced. 
NFTs are bought and sold through cryptocurrency. Originally it was to move digital money around. But, these days NFTs are pretty much done and worthless as a commodity... but not as a scam. They're used to capture real currency from you and convert and move it into cryptocurrency.

The scam, as always, is to get your money. 

What they do is make you an offer (that's too good to be true), and invite you to upload the digital images to a specific site. But, that site requires a credit card payment for each upload. We're talking around $150 for each upload. And then there's something they call a Gas Fee, which is a and $500 a pop to "convert" the file to an NFT.

Fortunately, I do not have any direct experience with this to carry on in explaining the manner of the scam beyond this. All I can say is DO NOT BUY INTO NFT OFFERS ON SOCIAL MEDIA.

​If it's too good to be true, it is. Don't engage.