Yuga Labs security engineer targeted by authorities

In 2022, he discovered a crypto-phishing website and helped investigate. Now Sam Curry himself is at the center of the investigation.

Sam Curry, a security engineer at Yuga Labs, was at the center of a federal investigation.

In 2022, he discovered a crypto-phishing site and helped authorities investigate.

When Curry returned to the U.S. from a flight from Japan, officials stopped him and handed him a subpoena. An interrogation lasting several hours followed. Curry also handed his laptop to the officers.

This is according to a message Curry posted on X on Sept. 27. The message has since been removed.

The reason for the investigation: Curry came across a scam site on the net in 2022. Administrators had accidentally published a private Ethereum key in the site's JavaScript.

Curry tried to investigate the incident by importing the private key into his MetaMask and checking to see if there were any assets left in the wallet were. In doing so, he used his IP address from home.

When authorities reviewed the authorization logs for the account of the NFT platform OpenSea requested, they stumbled upon the security engineer's IP. As a result, they issued a subpoena.

After consulting with Curry's attorney and authorities, the summons was dismissed.