The Instagram account belonging to the favored NFT assortment Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) was hacked on Monday. According to BAYC itself, the hacker used the entry to launch a phishing scheme that stole tens of millions of {dollars} in non-fungible tokens (NFTs) from the account’s followers.

BAYC, run by the cryptocurrency firm Yuga Labs, revealed what had occurred on Twitter early Monday morning, warning neighborhood members to keep away from the scheme. In an electronic mail to Gizmodo, a BAYC spokesperson confirmed particulars of the incident. “At 9:53am ET, we alerted our community, removed all links to Instagram from our platforms and attempted to recover the hacked Instagram account,” they stated.

The hacker allegedly used the compromised account to redirect neighborhood members to a phony BAYC web site. There, they marketed a faux airdrop. Airdrops are a crypto advertising method by which firms will ship out newly minted tokens without cost to neighborhood members to encourage engagement with sure tasks. In this case, the hacker claimed to offer entry to an upcoming Bored Ape challenge, Motherboard reports, and inspired customers to attach their MetaMask crypto wallets to the positioning. However, when customers did so, the positioning sucked the digital property out of their wallets and transferred them to the hacker’s pockets.

All advised, some 134 NFTs seem to have been transferred to the hacker’s pockets on Monday morning, quite a few which had been Bored Ape property, Motherboard reports.

“Rough estimated losses due to the scam are 4 Bored Apes, 6 Mutant Apes, and 3 BAKC [Bored Ape Kennel Club], as well as assorted other NFTs estimated at a total value of ~$3m,” a BAYC spokesperson advised Gizmodo. “We are actively working to establish contact with affected users.”

It’s by no means clear how the hacker managed to get contained in the BAYC Instagram account. “At the time of the hack, two-factor authentication was enabled and security surrounding the IG account followed best practices,” the BAYC twitter claimed on Monday. “We’ve regained control of the account, and are investigating how the hacker gained access with IG’s team.”

We reached out to Instagram for extra particulars on this incident and can replace our story in the event that they reply.

BAYC is a collection of 10,000 distinctive NFTs of computer-generated apes produced by Yuga Labs. Since their launch final April, the Apes have grow to be wildly in style (and costly), with all the assortment apparently driving over $1 billion in sales worldwide. Like different NFTs, the apes are mainly helpful as a result of there’s solely 10,000 of them. The shortage of the property signifies that, like a digital beanie child, some deep-pocketed crypto followers are keen to shell out tens of 1000’s of {dollars} for particular person photos of a weirdly dressed monkey as a result of there are just a few of them in existence.