Original author: Horlomite Research
Original compilation: Block unicorn
Luca Netz acquired Pudgy Penguins for 750 ETH (valued at $2.5 million) at the time, almost through a series of sell-offs and manipulations in which he and his partners were involved.
At the end of this article you will see on-chain evidence showing that 99.06% of Luca’s contribution came from his share from six different sell-off operations. These projects have raised millions of dollars, promising benefits ranging from animated series to comic books to BAYC sweepstakes. However, none of these benefits materialized, and the only benefit was that millions of dollars flowed into Luca Netz’s various wallets. As you will see, these individuals are a group of serial fraudsters involved in fraud across many different industries.
Lucas early years
Before getting involved in NFTs, Pudgy Penguins CEO Luca Netz had a string of high-profile, public, and often overblown ventures and initiatives. The name he gave himself, The Burberry Robber, was very apt. We will detail how he created multiple NFT scams before joining Pudgy Penguins, his malicious marketing strategies, his paid trading group, his claim to teach you how to make money, and the dozens of tokens he hyped in the industry. Coins and tokens were smashed by him, he was arrested multiple times, turned his friend into a fake expert and used him to sell courses, committed multiple securities fraud and wire fraud, and more. Youll learn that Luca has done every trick in the scam manual.
To get to know him better, well start by exploring his early criminal career. Some of Lucas first criminal offenses included stealing from local shops before dropping out of school at 16 and admitting to becoming a drug dealer. Some of his other early ventures included defrauding property owners into renting him large warehouses where he would host illegal parties without their knowledge. Although he was arrested multiple times, he avoided jail time because he was underage at the time and the contracts he signed were non-binding. Therefore, the responsibility for his actions falls on the owner. To quote Luca: Believe me, being a young adventurer on these streets, in these streets of Los Angeles... now I cant even talk about what I did. Heres the video:
https://rumble.com/v2 n 9 3d a-2-luca-netz-about-hosting-illegal-parties-clip.html
https://rumble.com/v2 n 9 bms-3-luca-netz-cant-even-talk-about-the-stuff-ive-done-now-clip.html
https://youtu.be/BVEdMdl2 kXQ? t= 5149
https://youtu.be/Kj-5T0H1Lns?t=386
In 2017, he opened his first company, named “LA Gold Cartel, LLC”, where he still serves as CEO:
https://opencorporates.com/companies/us_ca/201723610245
He used the newly formed company to start selling fake jewelry, fake Airpods and other devices, using influencers like Supremepatty to promote their counterfeit goods. The company used promotional images of genuine Apple products while selling counterfeit goods. These items are advertised as free, but when proceeding to checkout, an exorbitant shipping fee that exceeds industry standards is added to profit and deceive customers.
If a seller knowingly inflates shipping costs by stating that an item is free while inflating the shipping cost to cover the actual price of the item, this would be considered a deceptive or deceptive business practice under California law. Not to mention how deceptive it is to sell counterfeit goods and use images of their genuine products on your website.
Web Archive link:
https://web.archive.org/web/20200602065940/https://www.supremepatty.com/
Here’s a quote from Luca: “I started my first consumer-facing business selling fake gold chains and cubic zirconia diamonds to people who wanted the same jewelry that rappers wore. ” Here is the link to the video:
https://rumble.com/v2 n 8 y 7 e-1-luca-netz-about-selling-fake-jewlery-clip.html
https://twitter.com/supremepatty/status/1006009187548057605?s=20
Like any other professional liar, Luca began buying false reports about himself to create a false impression of credibility. We found 10 articles, all written between April and May 2021, and all of them used previously unseen photos of Luca. These include Sun Nigeria, which we believe even falsified the date of the article to 2016 while using photos that were taken in 2021. These media outlets are often exploited by scammers and scammers who publish false and fraudulent articles. Below is a list of news articles for sale, provided by another scammer, Riachu, including almost all of Luca’s articles, with prices ranging from $200 to $1,200.
Additionally, you can see an old fake news report featuring Luca with his good friend and long-time collaborator Nick Von. We will detail later how Nick defrauded dozens of people out of millions of dollars over the past few years. To illustrate the level of maliciousness of some of the people involved, youll see that Nick Vons victims included his girlfriend and his grandmother, whom he defrauded out of $60, 000. Below is a list of fake news articles.
Here’s Nick on Luca’s podcast in a video titled “How NICK VON MADE $5 MILLION IN DOGECOIN!!!” (spoiler: he didn’t make that much money):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvuQRRVJQQU
Ironically, one of the articles mistook Luca for a German footballer of the same name. Our advice to Luca is that the next time he wants to buy fake news to manipulate his public image, he should proofread an article about him before the seller publishes it.
We believe he purchased these articles to bolster his credibility as he prepared to execute his largest fraud to date, which he had been trying to cover up since the Pudgy Penguins acquisition.
Netz Trade
Luca’s next endeavor, starting in 2021, is what he calls Netz Trade, a subscriber-only Discord group offering trading advice and “automated trading signals.” Around this time, he also launched a $1,700 dropshipping course. Through this course, we were able to see early signs of how Luca would become successful as he taught students to purchase Instagram accounts with large followings, buy fake likes, and create fake comments. Eventually, he even started offering sports betting signals.
In order to induce people to purchase these services, he displayed questionable transaction results, showing huge profits, while also showing off the performance of his own agency store. On his website, he used the logos of the fake news articles he purchased to increase his credibility, in classic fraudster fashion as seen on. Not surprisingly, neither Yahoo nor Business Insider published any articles about him at the time, he just inserted fraudulent propaganda between all the false articles.
The question we ask is why someone who is both “mastery” of trading and an “8 figure affiliate” would need to sell more than one paid group and multiple courses.
It can be said that certain business courses can provide value and provide good value for money. After evaluating some of his courses, we can conclude that they are nothing special and we think there are better free courses available on platforms like YouTube. However, where things go wrong is when you start selling people a dream, telling them to join and start making money today, when you overpromise and under-deliver, when you teach your students malicious business strategies and they will When you continue to use and harm consumers, the problem arises when you eventually abandon them.
Furthermore, why would someone with good intentions who wants to help people who have paid thousands of dollars for a course that supposedly gives them financial freedom encourage those who paid to engage in gambling? Below is a message from one of Lucas Discord group admins on the Sports Signals channel, who encourages members to gamble and use their promotional links when doing so. He is luring them into something that is mathematically bound to fail, has ruined countless lives, and has the audacity to share his promotional link, remember, only if the person they introduced loses money. The casino can pay their commission.
A scam to save the koalas
In one section of his $1,700 premium course, Luca is teaching students the secret insiders approach. The course details strategies such as brand building, running advertising campaigns, and copywriting.
The focus product is a series of bracelets and necklaces purchased from Chinese suppliers at the lowest cost and sold at a markup five times higher than the purchase price. He marketed the jewelry as if it were a charitable initiative to protect endangered Australian koalas from wildfires. According to his promotion, a portion of the profits from every purchase will be donated to save and protect these animals. Yes, you read that right, his entire course was on how to deceive people who were sympathetic to Australian koalas because at that time there were forest fires in Australia and koalas were suffering from the fires.
While we strongly suspect that Luca would never donate a portion of his profits at all other than to protect himself from legal liability, even if he donated half of his profits, this would still be a very questionable way to make money, bordering on fraud . Even worse, he taught thousands of people, possibly creating a small army of Burberry robbers who defrauded people by preying on their sympathies.
https://rumble.com/v2 nbbj 6-4-luca-netz-saving-endangered-koalas-from-fire-sarcasm.html
In another part of the course, Luca Netz discusses how to make a lot of money by creating a false sense of value for a random Chinese product. He accomplishes this by listing high-end products from some well-known brands on his website and marking them as sold out, leaving only his own products available for purchase. He also mentioned that his friend had tried this tactic, but he thought his friend failed because no one put the effort into getting Instagram followers, buying likes, faking a lot of stuff, doing stuff like that.... He also went on to show people where they could buy fake followers, comments, and followers to make it easier to deceive their customers.
In mid-2022, Luca Netz was apparently publicly criticized by Twitter users for his Netz Trades and courses. However, tweets criticizing him reportedly received little attention and were later deleted as Luca threatened legal action. The veracity of these claims has not been fully confirmed in the article, and the author is seeking more information from the person who posted the tweet.
Please note that the information provided is based on what you share and its accuracy may need to be verified.
We think this made Luca realize that he quickly needed to move away from Netz Trades and Netz Commerce, so he did so. He quickly shut down the netztrades.com and netzcommerce.com websites and deleted their social media accounts, which we can still see in their original form thanks to the Web Archive, linked below:
https://web.archive.org/web/20211207172136/https://netztrades.com/home1
https://web.archive.org/web/20211207032233/https://netzcommerce.com/homepage-1
This monthly profit was so tempting for Luca that he decided to merge Netz Trades and Netz Commerce into Internet Accelerator and he didnt even bother to give notice to his members, they had to consult a support representative why Discord Server s name has been changed.
Some members believe this is Lucas response to Andrew Tates Hustlers University, and they suspect he created an all-in-one package to compete with him, where you can follow their trading recommendations and use their automated trading signals , become an eight-figure jumper like Luca and check out their daily sports betting advice.
While this new all-in-one package does seem like one of the new scams Luca would try, and its likely one of his main motivations, we still believe the main reason for the rebranding is to distance itself.
Luca posted his last message on the Discord about 7 months ago, and since then the Discord has been in decline with less and less activity, but still has hundreds of paying members. Another big problem is that many people purchased annual subscriptions or his $1700 Netz Commerce package which gave them lifetime access to these groups, but Luca decided to ditch them completely and hasnt sent a message in months , many of whom are big fans of Luca and we think they love Luca more than any Pudgy Penguin holder because they believed in the dream he sold them, yet his actions show that he doesnt care about them (his users) just dont care.
Luca, like a good old master, makes it very difficult for his subscribers to unsubscribe, if they want to do so they have to contact customer service and the response time from customer service can be quite long.
If youre reading this, theres a good chance Luca has taken down Internet Accelerators website, so heres a web archive link:
https://web.archive.org/web/20221010015532/https://www.internetaccelerator.io/
Were sure its just a matter of time before he and his partners ditch Pudgy Penguins and move on to the next scam, just like they do with anything else that doesnt seem profitable enough.
Master of Scam
Another scam Luca tried was to use his friend Noah Tucker to be the face behind his courses. He plans to teach him how to pretend to be a course master, which means he and his friends will deceive people by claiming he is successful in e-commerce, he will have him show fake results, and have people write fake articles for him , just like himself.
To quote Noah Tucker: This is when we were making the course together, and I dont know if you remember, when we started that course, I literally didnt have any money, I didnt make anything, so lets Think again, a worthless person is going to launch a course to teach others how to make money! They actually launched the course, it lasted for a while, they advertised it, but eventually gave up and Luca went on to launch Netz Trades and Netz Commerce, which you can see them discussing in the video below:
https://rumble.com/v2 nfhp 4-6-luca-netz-on-starting-a-course-with-noah-who-was-broke-at-the-time.html
Noah Tucker also has an article written about him that we suspect was paid for. The article claimed that he became a purchasing agent millionaire at the age of 20, and the question we asked was, why would a millionaire need a small investment from Luca to launch his new business?
A few months later, Luca and Peter Lobanov (a shareholder in Pudgy Penguins) invested in Noahs new company, SocialSnowball.
NFT scam
What few people know is that before acquiring Pudgy Penguins, Luca actually started several other NFT projects. These projects are secretly run by Luca and his team members. Heres the evidence we gathered.
Funding for the acquisition of Pudgy Penguins was provided by Luca Netz, Lorenzo Melendez (aka 0x LoMel) and Cowboy Labs’ Ulysses Atkeson (aka UnLink, CowboyUly) and Charles Kieu (aka ICanPlug, evaded, evaded.eth). This address received funds on the day the Pudgy Penguins purchase was announced, and approximately 68% of the funds were subsequently sent to a Coinbase deposit address that had been used multiple times previously by Pudgy Penguins deployers. The wallet used for the purchase is/was controlled by Luca, as later transactions sent funds to an unmarked alternative wallet owned by Luca.
The funding provided by Luca and the Cowboy Labs team can be directly traced to multiple sell-off projects. Specifically, Luca and Cowboy Labs Spooky Boy Country Club (SBCC), their sister franchise Spooky Boy Mansion Party (SBMP), Demi Gods Universe (DGU), Donut Shop (DS) and Cookies N Kicks (CNK). All of these projects, in part or in full, failed to deliver on their original promises and roadmaps.
SBCC appears to be Lucas first role as a project founder or board member as per the team page on the SBCC website. However, when looking at the on-chain activity of SBCC deployer wallets and the source of deployer funds, Luca’s status as a board member was called into question.
The SBCC deployers fund wallet, 0x a 0 ce (SBCC Funder), was one of Lucas early personal wallets. This connection is easy to make for two reasons. The first was a sale of BAYC #9608 by SBCC Funder to Lucas current public wallet 0x 3 f 8 c, with proceeds from the sale being sent to Coinbases deposit address. This Coinbase deposit address has received deposits from SBCC Funder and the confirmed Luca alternative wallet, this connection is strengthened in the case that the deposit address received deposits from these two previously mentioned wallets within only 13 seconds of each other. of funds, only one Ethereum block (Tx 1, Tx 2). Alternative wallets related to Luca have been sending and receiving ETH to each other over the past two years, with records from September 4, 2021, to April 9, 2023. The second link that proves this wallet belongs to Luca is actually simple, SBCC Funder has both received and sent funds to Lucas main and alternative wallets (Tx 1, Tx 2, Tx 3. Tx 4, Tx 5) over the past two years. ,).
After withdrawing minted funds from the SBCC contract, SBCC deployers distribute the funds to ten major wallets and a few other wallets that receive smaller amounts of funds. Eight of the major wallets can be confirmed as belonging to Luca through on-chain activity. The eight wallets include Luca’s main wallet, SBCC Funder, and a wallet used in Luca’s future sell-off project, DGU. The remaining two wallets are cowboylabs.eth and minecraftco.eth. Minecraftco.eth appears to belong to a collaborator who worked with Luca on some early projects and appears to be a marketing director; the address has multiple transactions with known marketing service providers, including Snow Promotions. Interestingly, it appears that this is where Luca started working with the Cowboy Labs team, sending approximately 76 ETH from the SBCC deployer to cowboylabs.eth.
SBCC’s sister series SBMP was deployed 36 days later, raising approximately 575.5 ETH. Within six days of the contract’s initial deployment, the vast majority of minted funds were distributed to Luca’s seven wallets, including four backup wallets, his primary wallet, and the SBCC Funder. The remaining funds will be sent to an unmarked Cowboy Labs address, minecraftco.eth, and various other miscellaneous wallets. A third collectible, SpooKeys, was also released, but this is free for existing SBCC and SBMP holders.
All Lucas transactions can be traced by noting simple ETH transfers between these backup wallets and Lucas main public wallet, sharing transaction deposit addresses with other wallets confirmed to belong to Luca, or having subsequent activity with backup wallets confirmed to belong to Luca. Backup wallet.
Address activity graph:
https://metasleuth.io/result/eth/0xf7ae375da3bc2be346157159cedc2d2effe7797fa6f2622c347506b2a758a1cb? source=b 6 b 9331 e-28 f 6-4 f 5 e-8 e 4 d-0 b2b b 3 b 049 dc
On January 9, 2022, Luca created a group chat with his partner Nick and a guy who provides NFT promotion services, and they asked about the services he offered. When asked what projects they were promoting, Nick replied: Demigods Universe and CNK World. They are looking to purchase Telegram Advertising services. The source who provided the screenshots requested anonymity.
By contacting some of his colleagues, we have confirmed that this is Lucas phone number, when we added this number to our WhatsApp contacts, Luca appeared in the avatar; when we searched for it on Telegram, it had a Pudgys avatar. In the image below you can see most of the number, we didnt want to leak the entire number so as not to violate Twitters guidelines, but we left just a part so that anyone who has his number can verify for themselves that it is indeed him . Additionally, some members of the Netz Trades Discord also suspected Luca was the one speaking on the Demigods Twitter space.
Searching for his friends number on Telegram we found an account, @nicholasravid, who claimed in his profile to be a co-owner of Pudgy Penguins.
Luca is also the fifth largest holder of Demigods, holding 9 CNK, here is his public wallet link:
https://etherscan.io/address/0x3f8cD3cc58391E704A2A0fab2482B8116Cb9D670
Demi Gods Universe
Luca’s next rip-off project is Demi Gods Universe (DGU). DGU appears to be the first “official” collaboration between Luca and Cowboy Labs. This is demonstrated by the initial funding provided by cowboylabs.eth for the DGU Deployer. Approximately five days after the contract was deployed, 272.28 ETH was withdrawn from the DGU contract, between the two transactions, and distributed to a Luca-controlled wallet (which also received the minted funds he received from SBCC) belonging to Lucas Coinbase Deposit address, Lucas alternative wallet, minecraftco.eth, unmarked Cowboy Labs address, and a Gnosis Safe.
This Gnosis Safe briefly collected royalties from the DGU series (the Gnosis Safe was quickly emptied and funds were sent to a wallet most likely controlled by jay 724.eth). Overall, Luca receives approximately 63% from DGU’s minting proceeds. Within nine minutes of receiving his share of minted funds, 5 ETH was sent to the aforementioned Coinbase deposit address, confirming that it indeed belonged to Luca.
The majority of Lucas funds from DGU minting were rolled into a wallet that remained untouched for nearly 50 days; 41 days after the wallets first withdrawal transaction, 250 ETH was provided to purchase Pudgy Penguins.
Address activity graph:
https://metasleuth.io/result/eth/0xce1435b7580aa99793a6ca6e492a0250852cffd1a1bafc0f569500cc7f0c9cfc? source=a 71 ad 5 3a-d 374-4011-be 46-841322 f 95 ea 2
The project was launched on December 21, 2021, with a total of 3,120 NFTs minted at a price of 0.1 ETH each, resulting in a profit of 312 ETH for Luca and Nick, worth $1.37 million at the time.
Based on the average price of the last 10 NFTs sold, their price has dropped by a staggering 99.84%, with each NFT worth just $0.74, while the mint price was 0.1 ETH.
They decided to shut down their Discord and their website, but with the help of web archives we were able to see what their website looked like at the time, as well as investigate all the promises they made.
https://web.archive.org/web/20211223030424/https://www.demigodsuniverse.com/
The following is a series of commitments:
(Q4 2021) - All minted people will receive exclusive access in Discord and will begin earning benefits from this universe. - Discord has since been shut down.
(Q4 2021) - Once all the mini-gods have been given their paths by the universe and assigned to their factions, each faction will be airdropped with a secret weapon. This secret weapon will serve as our Demi Voting mechanism in Gods Universe DAO, Demi Gods will be able to use them in Eternal War. The secret weapon lets Demi Gods choose how they want to fight in Eternal War. - DAO never launched, there is no Eternal War ”, the weapon serves no practical purpose.
(Q1 2022) - The first comic series of the Demi Gods Universe will be released. Holders of Demi Gods will receive huge benefits from the comics. Holders of Demi Gods will receive exclusive access to comics from our Demi Gods A 30% share collected from book sales. Characters used in comic books will also receive an additional 40% share of sales, plus a 30% share allocated to the holder. This 40% depends on the character in each comic series , features, and factions. Additionally, if you are the only holder, you will receive a total of 5% of comic book minting each quarter. - The comic series was never released and holders received no compensation.
(Q2 2022) - The Demi Gods Universe will be partnered with another NFT and we will feature it in our comic book. This will allow new Demi Gods to join the universe and we will provide even more utility through the collaboration . Holders will receive the same benefits as before, and the commanders of the Demi Gods Universe will ensure that cooperation is strategic to ensure that the universe and its holders receive the greatest value.” — Nothing happened.
(Q3 2022) - Demi Gods Universe plans to publish comic books in print! We will be working with the best publishing houses as well as the best comic book artists to launch our comic books in print. Holders will receive worldwide 5% share of comic book sales and will be invited to our official launch party! - Holders did not receive any percentage of sales and the official launch party was not held.
Based on the information provided, these individuals apparently engaged in securities fraud through misleading statements, fraudulent promises, including financial benefits and potential monetary returns related to a percentage of comic book sales that failed to materialize, among other benefits. Therefore, it is obvious that their actions violated the law and moral bottom line.
Luca and Nick also publicly announced on their Twitter that everyone who purchases their NFT will automatically be entered into a $250,000 Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) giveaway. However, this giveaway never happened and they actually defrauded everyone who participated in the NFT purchase. This involves multiple major violations of U.S. law and may well constitute fraudulent representation and wire fraud, and we hope that the relevant U.S. authorities will take appropriate action.
Please note that I am not a lawyer and this information does not constitute legal advice. It is recommended that you consult a legal professional who specializes in such matters for specific guidance.
We also found this project to be somewhat of a copycat of Divine Anarchy, with both projects featuring a similar anime-style design, both promising comic books, and both promising similar perks. Both speak of an eternal battle between good and evil, and both plan to airdrop some items to help them fight in these battles. Holy Anarchy airdrops animals, while Demigods Universe airdrops weapons.
Even more interestingly, Holy Anarchy was launched by Luke Belmar, who was also a Pudgy Penguins shareholder and was abandoned at short notice due to a questionable casting contract, resulting in a loss of $3 million. Longtime friend of Luca Netz, well look into that later.
CNK World
Lucas last project with Cowboy Labs was Cookies N Kicks (CNK). On the first day after being funded by cowboylabs.eth, CNK Deployer withdrew 234.08 ETH from the CNK contract and split the funds into two parts, depositing one part into a Kraken deposit address owned by Cowboy Labs and the other part into a Kraken deposit address for further use Intermediate wallet for decentralized funds. The funds were primarily allocated to Lucas primary wallet, Lucas alternative wallet, an aggregation address owned by Luca that was used to pay for the Pudgy Penguins acquisition, and two Coinbase deposit addresses that likely belonged to Luca. The remaining funds, approximately 30%, will be distributed among various other wallets that Luca does not control.
Address Activity Graph
https://metasleuth.io/result/eth/0x483b29deb863d43a630a23262eb90225a599655ec9e1a180dcaa930ad79b8721? source=ecd 72 eca-e 9 b 6-4 d 03-8 d5 8-33 c 179 c 3 cb 8 d
As we were completing our research on CNK, we discovered that a YouTuber had posted two videos about this scam. In these videos, there is no mention of the connection between Luca and his other scams, they mainly focus on the second owner Eli Hyman, but regardless, we recommend you to watch these videos if you are interested.
Part One: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjluOX2qOWo
Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3Wb52-u-zk
CNK stands for Cookies and Kicks, a sneaker store on Melrose Ave in Los Angeles where one of the partners is Luca Netz. Hes spoken publicly several times about his involvement with the store, and based on the text we shared, we can see he was consulting with CNKs marketing services. He even once participated in a podcast titled Luca Netz - The Shopify Powerhouse Behind Cookies N Kicks. Heres a snippet of him talking about this topic:
https://rumble.com/v2 nxloq-luca-netz-about-cookies-n-kicks.html
In addition to the Demigod scam, Luca also decided to use the brand of his sneaker store Cookies N Kicks to launch this NFT scam, CNK World.
To date, any mention of CNK World has been removed from Cookies N Kicks social media. Their Twitter account has been deleted, the username was taken by someone else in February, all discussion channels in their Discord have been deleted, and all posts on their Instagram page have been deleted. Today, only their website, cnkworld.io, remains.
We suspect they may have removed their website after our study was published, so here is a web archive link to their website:
https://web.archive.org/web/20220209092537/https://www.cnkworld.io/
To promote this NFT project, they purchased ads from Instagram pages and TikTok influencers, here is the email they sent to TikTokers asking about the cost:
One of the paid ads specifically talks about CNK’s meteoric growth and how quickly they gained 80,000 members in Discord. Considering that only 0.43% of CNK Discord members are active, we believe that Luca purchased and added fake members and fake followers to his social media pages to create the illusion of credibility and value, like he was on his course As taught (teaching clients how to create false marketing).
CNK World’s NFT was first sold on February 9, 2022, with a minting price of
