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Ava Labs’ chief operating officer Luigi D’Onorio DeMeo’s X account has come to the fore with suspicions that it may have been hacked after he shared memecoins and suspicious links.
Luigi D’Onorio DeMeo’s X account was allegedly hacked after he shared posts about a newly released Pokémon-themed memecoin and suspicious airdrop links. In two posts made on August 19th and now deleted, the address of a memecoin called Pika (PIKA) based on Solana was shared. The coin appears to be inspired by Pikachu, one of the central characters in the media franchise, and the posts point to a possible pump-and-dump scheme.
Many crypto users have warned on the X platform not to click on or follow the shared links.
“I am an [Avalanche] maxi, but Solana is bound to lead this bull market,” DeMeo’s account said in a post. “Due to the increasing interest in memecoins, I am creating the $PIKA token on Solana based on my favorite character.”
It is not known how the attackers infiltrated DeMeo’s account. Ava Labs did not immediately respond to requests for comment sent outside of business hours. DeMeo did not immediately respond to a message sent on LinkedIn.
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Following the posts from DeMeo’s account, PIKA’s market cap rose to $388,570 at approximately 1:40 UTC, but it quickly fell, losing more than 99% of its value and currently sitting at $3,289 (according to DEX Screener data).
DeMeo’s account also shared links to suspicious websites claiming to distribute Avalanche tokens and invited users to connect their crypto wallets. Comments have also been disabled to prevent others from reporting scams, and it has been claimed that “malicious links” are likely to be shared.
These websites, while stylized to mimic Ava Labs’ design, may also contain a “wallet drainer” that steals all crypto from the connected wallet.
The X account “REKTBuildr” reported that another scam website link was previously shared from DeMeo’s account. That link has since been removed.
REKTBuildr estimated that the domain in question was registered 18 minutes before the link was shared from DeMeo’s account, and that the attackers spent 30 minutes registering the domain, finding hosting, and sharing the scam link after taking over DeMeo’s account.
Similar attacks have occurred this year. In July, actress Sydney Sweeney’s X account was hacked to promote a crypto token using her image.
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