Actor Bill Murray, best known for films like Ghostbusters, Caddyshack, and Groundhog Day, lost 119 Ethereum tokens after holding a charity auction for an NFT.
The "beer with Bill Murray" NFT had a small number of bidders vying for the token, which, as the name suggests, also netted the winning bidder a meetup with the actor. The 119 Ethereum winning bid, worth roughly $185,000 at the time, was meant to be donated to Chive Charities, which aids the families of veterans and first responders.
A hacker, however, managed to breach the actor's crypto wallet and make off with the Ethereum. While the hacker attempted to abscond with some of Murray's personal NFT collection, a security team managed to prevent them from stealing anything further. The team also prevented the hacker from making off with NFTs from the Bill Murray collection.
According to Murray's NFT team, police have been contacted and the analytics firm Chainalysis has been brought on to help track down the hacker. How the hacker managed to breach Murray's wallet hasn't been revealed.
Chive Charities still received a $185,000 donation courtesy of the auction's second-place bidder, who donated 119 Ethereum to the non-profit after the original donation was stolen.
"All My Apes Gone" - A Brief Recap of High-Profile NFT Thefts
NFT theft has become something of a norm, though it is often only large-scale heists and thefts from major NFT collections that make headlines.
Bored Ape Yacht Club, which has become something of a poster child for the NFT world, has been targeted in multiple high-profile heists. In June, BYAC was hacked for $350,000 worth of NFTs in a phishing attack. In April, BYAC was hacked for a $1.7 million of tokens.
The gaming space also hasn't been safe from hacks, with the blockchain-based game Axie Infinity being hacked for an astonishing $600 million.
Murray isn't the first celebrity to be hit by an NFT theft, or even the first actor, with the latter honor belonging to "Robot Chicken" creator Seth Green. The actor and cartoonist lost a BYAC NFT in a phishing attack, which placed a show based around his token in an uncomfortable limbo as, by the rules of the NFT world, he technically didn't own the show's "main star" anymore.
While Green eventually got his ape back, the debacle cast a sharply negative light on the creator's future show, and on the NFT market in general.