A Fake Banksy NFT, a Hacked Website, and a Same-Day Refund

NFT collector Pranksy paid 100 ETH (roughly $344,000) for what appeared to be a genuine Banksy piece — only for the sale to unravel into one of the odder publicity mysteries the NFT market has produced.

Banksy's decades of turning street art into a globally recognized brand have long drawn opportunists eager to trade on his name. This case went further than the usual imitators: the artist's official website was compromised outright, with a link inserted that pointed to an NFT titled "Great Redistribution of the Climate Change Disaster," listed on OpenSea.

Pranksy's purchase, and the controversy that followed, drew coverage from numerous major news outlets, including the BBC, the Daily Mail and VICE, and quickly fueled speculation that Pranksy had staged the whole thing himself — a theory helped along by the thousands of new followers he picked up within a single day. None of that mainstream coverage dug into how the scheme actually worked, so rekt.news went looking for answers directly.

Pranksy's account

Pranksy told rekt.news that someone had flagged the listing to him inside a Discord server. He said he may well have been personally targeted, though he wasn't aware of anyone else who had been, and described the operation as "quite sophisticated." He had no explanation for how the attacker managed to redirect traffic from Banksy's real site, saying he was still trying to figure that out himself, and confirmed he had not yet reached out to Pest Control, the body that authenticates Banksy's work.

Asked directly whether he had minted and hyped the piece himself to generate buzz, he pushed back — noting he was already the most-followed NFT-focused account on Twitter, had no need for extra exposure, and would not risk sabotaging a hoped-for future collaboration with Banksy by hacking the artist's own site. He said his suspicion that the piece was fake set in the moment his bid was accepted, and that he would have kept bidding higher had he lost the auction, since he weighs an NFT's worth by the artist's historical significance, the token's quality, the chain it's minted on, and the craftsmanship of the piece itself. He ended the exchange urging readers to stay skeptical and do their own research, calling the NFT scene "an incredible creative hub of activity."

About an hour later, the 100 ETH was sent back to his wallet. Asked whether the "publicity stunt" accusations still bothered him now that the money had actually been returned, he said they did, and pointed to a reply he'd posted underneath his own tweet announcing the refund.

A second thread: the August breach

This wasn't the first time Banksy's site had been compromised. On August 25, its homepage briefly carried a link to the Instagram account of @samwcyo, a known hacker and bug-bounty hunter. rekt.news also noticed that Pranksy had unfollowed samwcyo on Twitter the same day the fake NFT sold. Asked about it, Pranksy said he had briefly followed and then unfollowed Sam after considering him a suspect, and confirmed the two had never actually spoken.

samwcyo's account

Reached separately, samwcyo told rekt.news he assumed Banksy's site had simply been hacked, and called the whole episode "a fun story about how crypto is always going to be related to some real life point of trust even though it's all (mostly) cryptographically secure." He said he was glad the September hackers had returned the money and that he genuinely liked the artwork, though he wanted to know why he'd been contacted about the story in the first place.

Told that the August 25 breach had displayed a link to his own Instagram, he explained he had earlier tried to responsibly disclose a vulnerability to Banksy's team, sending a string of emails after discovering the flaw but never getting a reply — as far as he knew, the bug, which he described as simple but severe, was still unpatched. He said he wouldn't be surprised if another party had independently found the same hole, and that he was relieved whoever used it in September had treated it as a harmless prank rather than something malicious.

He denied any direct contact with Pranksy, saying he had only recently followed him on Twitter in an attempt to reach Banksy, and hadn't realized Pranksy had been following him back. He said he had initially assumed, incorrectly, that Pranksy and Banksy might be connected, and had spent roughly a week messaging every channel he could find — email, Instagram, and others — given how difficult it is to reach anyone tied to Banksy's anonymous operation. He shared a screenshot of one such email as evidence. He traced his discovery of the flaw to a private Discord group of hacking-community members, where someone had posted the Banksy site as a target worth testing; it was not a public server. Once he realized Pranksy and Banksy weren't related, he said, he located a working email address, sent Instagram messages directly to Banksy, and posted the photo linking to his own account onto the site himself.

What's left unresolved

Even with both accounts on record, rekt.news found it hard to fully rule out some form of coordination behind the scenes. What isn't in dispute: Pranksy came away with a substantial publicity boost, no financial loss, and ownership of an NFT that, as of writing, carries a highest bid of 12.5 ETH (about $44,000).

Several questions remain open. Would burning the piece as a gesture of good faith count as art, or just another layer of the performance? If money was the goal, why cut the auction short at 100 ETH rather than let bidding climb higher? If publicity was the goal, why would a hacker agree to take part at all — unless paid more than the 100 ETH itself, a scenario rekt.news considers unlikely. Readers were invited to help keep digging via rekt's Telegram group.