Crypto scams are commonplace; everyone knows this.
But some are more vicious than others.
Some scammers even get away with repeating the same type of rug pull repeatedly. And sometimes, their crimes go beyond financial theft.
I was recently contacted by someone who wants to get their story out to the public.
What follows is an account of a well-known crypto scammer alongside a harrowing testimony from a survivor of his scams.
Alleged Crypto Scammer Jeremy Cahen, aka Pauly0x
It’s been brought to my attention that an individual who goes by the online pseudonym Pauly0x has a long history of alleged crypto scams.
According to Hackernoon, Jeremy Cahen was one of three defendants sued by Yuga Labs in June 2022.
Source: Hackernoon
The story is much too long to cover in detail here. Essentially, the lawsuit alleges that Cahen along with a controversial and failed artist Ryder Ripps was part of a group selling infringing NFTs using trademarks belonging to Yuga Labs and Bored Ape Yacht Club, scamming buyers out of millions.
In February 2024, Cointelegraph reported that a judge had ruled in favor of Yuga Labs, requiring the defendants to pay over $9 million in statutory damages combined.
There’s also a Reddit thread in the r/scams subreddit that claims “Pauly0x stole $286k in less than an hour openly,” although the original post’s content have since been deleted, X (formerly Twitter) users have called Pauly0x out for his scams.
What does former Pauly0x PNDX, PorkCoin, and Pond0x collaborator OG_Kenobi_Hello think of the outcomes of Pauly0x’s projects and how they impacted people?
This is what Kenobi thinks of the impact Pauly0x’s projects had on people:
But this is only the beginning of the many allegations against Pauly0x.
Pauly0x: Rug Pulls on Repeat
It appears that Jeremy Cahen, aka Pauly0x, has been conducting a classic pump-and-dump crypto scam over and over. The MO will be familiar to many within the crypto space.
It goes like this:
1) Launch a token
2) Hype the token launch on social media
3) Either sell tokens as soon as people buy in or steal user funds from a DeFi platform outright
There are variations to this, but by and large, all the scams follow the same outline.
The token could be hyped on mainstream social media like Twitter or private channels on Discord or Telegram.
Once people have bought tokens, their funds will be unrecoverable, either through loss of purchasing power or outright theft.
My source for this story claims to have evidence that, in one case, Cahen used a solidity contract that allowed users to provide millions in liquidity to Uniswap in exchange for a nominal amount of a scam token known as PNDX that other users could move from users’ wallets without their approval. Shortly after, the liquidity the users provided to Uniswap to purchase the PNDX was drained. Three hours after PNDX launched and the users’ liquidity drained, Pauly0x finally told the victims not to use Uniswap to purchase PNDX. But it was too late. The users’ funds had vanished.
The ETH wallet ending in 6faf started the “mining contract, ” a multi-signature wallet, and added liquidity to Uniswap 30 minutes before Pauly0x posted the contract address. The developer used the mining contract and then went to sell on Uni Swap. This is all publicly available information found on breadcrumbs and ETH scan. The joke was on the victims in a similar way to another Pauly0x grift, yougetnothing.eth which is described in this Reddit thread, https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/14f4drl/twitter_user_pauly0x_had_told_people_to_send_him/, where people provided liquidity to Pauly0x and indeed got nothing in return.
But the story doesn’t stop there.
What’s particularly disturbing about Cahen’s scams is his apparent lack of remorse for his alleged crimes and outright contempt for his victims.
There is no doubt that Pauly0x is behind Pond0x. According to a press release syndicated by Markets Insider:
“The Pond ecosystem was created by the controversial crypto personality Jeremy Cahen AKA @Pauly0x to give power and value back to the holders. ‘@Pond0x is a decentralized platform offering basic DEX functions. You can swap any ERC-20 token and bridge assets to/from other chains. What distinguishes Pond0x from other DEX’s are the numerous benefits to users of the platform.’”
What is telling is that Pond0x has no apparent anti-money laundering or sanctions avoidance controls, which allows bad actors to wash illicit funds through Pond0x. This is similar to the activity that Uniswap received an SEC Wells Notice about earlier this year and is explained in this Chainalysis blog post about money laundering: https://www.chainalysis.com/blog/crypto-money-laundering-2022/ .
One utility for Pauly0x is that Pond0x is a perfect exchange for his latest scam, a token called “Pork” to be traded on when other centralized exchanges with anti-money laundering controls won’t agree to list it. Pork fell to a price near zero after Cahen announced that he was dumping his tokens and called his followers “retarded.”
Violent Escalation
This contempt of Cahen’s turned to real-life rage for one scam survivor.
After encountering Jeremy on the street, the individual in question began speaking with him. After mentioning that he had lost a lot of ETH on Uniswap thanks to Jeremy’s PNDX token scam, Jeremy became aggravated. What happened next led to Jeremy Cahen being charged with felony assault.
In Puerto Rico, where Cahen resides, there is a warrant for his arrest, with bail being set at $75,000.
Conclusion: Pauly0x Crypto Scams
The alleged scams by Pauly0x have resulted in tens of millions of dollars lost.
In closing, a statement from the scam survivor, warding caution against crypto scams and calling on the community to stay safe:
“The responsibility for keeping the cryptocurrency community safe rests with the community itself, as members must share knowledge to help others navigate this emerging technology. The lack of regulation, for better or worse, leaves many vulnerable to bad actors who use social media and the absence of oversight to their advantage, orchestrating bold scams that would never be tolerated in other industries.
As a community manager with experience moderating platforms like Telegram and Discord for various companies, I’ve seen firsthand the numerous attempts by these malicious individuals to lure victims for their own financial gain. It’s essential for the community to remain vigilant, continually educate one another, and report any suspicious activities to protect our collective interests and create a safer environment for everyone involved.”