Serious allegations implicating Kevin Pawlak, the former head of OpenSea Ventures, in pump and dump schemes have been gaining traction.

NFT Ethics, an investigative news source focused on non-fungible tokens (NFTs), has shed light on Kevin's purported involvement in various questionable business dealings and pump and dump schemes.

Ex CEO of OpenSea Ventures

According to NFT Ethics, these activities were orchestrated under his pseudonymous identities, "@0xSisyphus" and "0xMagellan."

These allegations first surfaced last month when NFT Ethics conducted an investigation, concluding that Kevin was the owner of the X account "@0xSisyphus."

This conclusion was based on an analysis of transactions and corresponding timestamps between the pawlak.eth and sisyphus.eth addresses.

Blockchain data reveals that an Ethereum address starting with "0xBB5B" registered domains like kevinpawlak.eth, pavvlak.eth, pawlak.eth, and kevinpawlak.eth on 4 October 2021.

The investigation by NFT Ethics further disclosed that both the pawlak.eth and sisyphus.eth addresses minted Zorbs tokens within a minute of each other and sismo.eth DAO tokens within 10 minutes of each other.

NFT Ethics wrote:

"…the following timestamps perfectly match up, and given the very limited activity of pawlak.eth, we have now accounted for most of their actions that are perfectly in line with sisyphus.eth."

NFT Ethics also cited anonymous sources who corroborated that Kevin is the individual behind the Sisyphus account.

$60M AnubisDAO Rugpull

Additionally, the news outlet alleged that Kevin played a "dubious role" in the $60 million AnubisDAO rugpull in October 2021 and was involved in promoting "Rollbit."

NFT Ethics asserted that the Anubis incident was a meticulously planned rug pull orchestrated by Sisyphus and that the misappropriated funds were being funneled through PEPE tokens.

According to NFT Ethics, Kevin, using his pseudonym, purportedly hyped the Anubis project on Discord just one day before the rugpull, an interaction that was documented by a user.

Kevin claimed to have invested a substantial $420,000 in the project and expressed intentions to invest even more the following day.

Notably, at that time, control of the Anubis project's funds was held by Ethan Cheung, a 19-year-old individual.

When the project suffered a rug pull the following day, Ethan asserted that he received an email from Sisyphus containing a malicious PDF file, compromising both his device and wallet security.

It is noteworthy that several individuals have corroborated Ethan's version of events.

However, Sisyphus countered these claims with a blog post, purportedly framing Ethan for the rug pull.

NFT Ethics concluded that Sisyphus likely orchestrated the Anubis rug pull with a co-conspirator:

"The role of Pawlak, Zim & Co. in the $60m Anubis rug & other PnD schemes is deserving of far more scrutiny. They have the intellectual/technical ability to orchestrate such “hacks” and we hope for a deep investigation into the origins of all their crypto/FIAT funds/purchases."

In a subsequent post on 5 October, NFT Ethics provided chat log screenshots from the Anubis team, dated between 27 and 29 October 2021.

Based on these chat records, NFT Ethics concluded that Sisyphus held a central role in the Anubis project, wielding authority over various aspects, including the wording of X posts and all technical and financial decisions.

Further screenshots were presented to suggest that Sisyphus was the mastermind behind the Anubis rugpull and had manipulated events to implicate Ethan as the scapegoat.

In their recent update, which has also been shared by the blockchain analytics platform Lookonchain, NFT Ethics highlighted:

"We refrained from posting these earlier, but the amount of silence on this subject is deafening. Because he is well-connected, not many people dare to speak out about this fraudulent network of people."

Lookonchain has conducted an independent verification process, confirming that the transaction timestamps on both addresses, pawlak.eth and sisyphus.eth, align seamlessly.

The allegations against Kevin have received additional corroboration from Tim Copeland, a journalist at The Block.

Tim, through undisclosed sources, has independently verified the identity of Sisyphus, further strengthening the claims made against Kevin.

A spokesperson from OpenSea commented:

"Kevin is a former employee who left the company in June of 2023. He had a limited scope while at OpenSea- where he worked in a non-management position. We have no awareness of his involvement with the projects in question. Furthermore, we have no connection to, or information about, the projects in question, as they took place before his time at OpenSea."