Bill Murrays crypto stolen after $185K charity auction

By: Henry Felix

September 3, 2022 2:24 AM

A hacker stole the money from Bill Murray's NFT auction hours after it had ended, raising 119.2 ETH (or roughly $185,000) for charity on Thursday.

Data from Etherscan and information provided by Murray's team indicate that the hacker began draining Murray's personal wallet at around 7:00 p.m. ET on Thursday. The hacker also made an attempt to steal a collection of non-fungible tokens from the actor's collection.

The hack of such a famous figure demonstrates that even celebrities are not immune to the dangers posed by crypto hackers and thieves. But luckily for Bill Murray, he had a security detail on the scene who managed to keep his wallet safe and prevent any major damage.

Actor Bill Murray had his valuable NFTs, such as a Damien Hirst NFT, two CryptoPunks, a Pudgy Penguin, a Cool Cat, and a large number of Flower Girls, moved to two safehouse wallets by the NFT security team at NFT consultancy Project Venkman.

It has been reported that Project Venkman was able to prevent the theft of 800 NFTs from the Bill Murray collection by hiding them away from the hacker. They claimed to have used a script to dispatch the NFTs to a safe location. Unfortunately, they were not as successful at keeping the money safe.

The hacker stole 119.2 ETH that Murray had raised for a charity auction the day before, according to a representative of the charity. Murray's group believes that the hacker transferred the stolen funds to a wallet address associated with the cryptocurrency exchange Binance and the blockchain company Unionchain.ai. No one knows who did it yet.

As stated by a representative of the marketplace, Mishap72, the auction's runner-up, has reportedly compensated Chive Charities for the lost ETH by donating 120 ETH (approximately $187,500), as stated by a representative of the marketplace.

Murray claims his team has reported the incident to law enforcement and is collaborating with the crypto analytics firm Chainalysis to track down and prosecute the perpetrator. However, at the time of writing, Chainalysis has not issued any confirmation.