On the 29th of September, Lark Davis, an Ethereum enthusiast, was accused of a pump-and-dump scheme. ZachXBT, an on-chain investigator, claims he advocated small-cap projects to his followers only to dump them later.
The on-chain investigator did not make this accusation without examples, giving eight instances where such had happened. ZachXBT had been alerted by Davis’ followers who had fallen victim to the ruse.
He described how he found the crypto influencer’s wallet address before moving on to the numerous cases. The address was revealed in a Lark Davis YouTube video posted in November 2017. Additionally, one of his Opensea collections of NFTs shared the same address. ZachXBT was able to keep track of all his transactions using this address.
He provided a screenshot of how Lark Davis earned 62,500 UMB at 4 pm in February last year. The influencer claimed that UMB was rising on listing after four hours, but he sold all 62,500 UMB for the dollar equivalent a few hours later.
Another example occurred last year when Lark Davis received 96,000 DOWS tokens around 4 pm. Six hours later, he said the project was launching in 16 hours via his Twitter account. On launching, he then sold 24,000 DOWS for 56k U.S. Dollars.
Every example followed the same pattern. He receives the token, promotes it, and hours later dumps everything.
However, the crypto influencer has since refuted the allegation. Lark Davis claimed that when addressing his followers, he made it clear that he was an investor. He talked about it before the sale to allow his followers to participate in the token sale. All of these coins were purchased by him; none were free.
He added that he was not a significant contributor to these projects and that the proceeds from his sales could not have ruined them. However, the crypto community has reacted differently to his response, with some praising and others criticising him.
