Velodrome Finance, a central trading and liquidity marketplace on Optimism.io, comes under public criticism after its own employee tries to steal $350,000 of Velodrome’s funds from team-owned wallets. The funds were quickly recovered and the stealer was identified.
NFT and crypto scams are quite common. In recent months, many companies' own employees were caught scamming and using their access for wrongdoings. This time, the Velodrome Finance team identified the stealer to be their own member.
The team tried to protect the remaining funds by sending them to the treasury multi-sig wallet but the attacker easily drained them out in one go. During the investigation and successful recovery of the stolen funds, the Velodrome team identified that the stealer was none other than their own team member named Gabagool.
Gabagool fooled the whole team to steal the funds and keep to himself. A former employee explained that Gabagool had lost thousands in the crypto market which led him to steal assets from his own team’s salaries.
After being identified, the marketplace immediately fired the employee and is currently in legal counsel against them.