French developer steals $900k from TICKER presale, buys NFTs and memecoins

ZackXBT recently uncovered a scam involving French developer Jolan Lacroix, who misappropriated $900,000 from the TICKER token presale on Base.

TICKER had raised 877 Ethereum (ETH), equivalent to $3.19 million, with promises of specific token distributions including liquidity provision, presale, airdrops, rewards for early contributors, and a reserve for errors. The project team chose to remain anonymous.

The scam unfolded shortly after the Token Generation Event (TGE), when Jolan, tasked with distributing airdrop tokens, sold 13% of the TICKER supply for $900,000 on March 16, betraying the community’s trust. ZackXBT’s investigation began with conversations with another team member, leading to the exposure of Jolan’s actions on Warpcast and X.

According to ZackXBT, Jolan attempted to launder the stolen funds by moving the ETH across different blockchains using Orbiter Finance, Mayan Swap, and Allbridge, from Base to Ethereum, then to Solana. He later admitted to the theft on X, unabashedly stating he was “not sorry” before deactivating his account.

The investigation revealed that Jolan redirected $536,000 of the stolen assets back to Ethereum, investing approximately $161,000 in Milady NFTs and derivatives, while also engaging in meme coin trading, maintaining over $140,000 across several wallets. This incident highlights the risks associated with anonymous teams and the importance of due diligence in the digital asset space.

The popularity of the Milady NFT collection has attracted several scammers over the past week. The collection’s creator, Charlotte Fang, was hacked earlier this week, as a hacker drained millions in ETH from the project’s DAO. The collection also launched its meme coin presale, which reached its $18.6 million goal in just two hours on March 19.