After having a meeting with scammers posing as investors in a hotel lobby in Rome, the co-founder of the Web3 metaverse game engine known as “Webaverse” stated that the company was the victim of a $4 cryptocurrency theft. millions.

According to co-founder Ahad Shams, the most peculiar feature of the incident is the fact that the cryptocurrency was taken from a Trust Wallet that had just been set up and that the hack took place at some point during the meeting.

He claims that the crooks had no way of knowing the private key as he was not connected to a public WiFi network at the time and would not have had access to it.

Shams believes that the thieves were able to gain access to the wallet while she was photographing the contents of the wallet to record the amount.

The letter, which was posted on Twitter on February 7 and contains testimony from Webaverse and Shams, explains that they met with a guy named “Mr. Safra” on November 26 after many weeks of negotiations over the possibility of receiving funding.

Shams provided the following explanation: “We communicated with ‘Mr. Safra’ via email and video chats, and he said he wanted to invest in exciting Web3 startups.”

“He explained that he had been scammed by people in crypto before, so he collected our IDs for KYC and made it a requirement that we fly to Rome to meet him because it was important to know IRL to ‘feel comfortable’ with who.” We were each doing business,” he added. “He explained that he had been scammed by people in crypto before.”

Although Shams was initially skeptical, he agreed to meet “Mr. Safra” and his “banker” in person in a hotel lobby in Rome. During this meeting, Shams was supposed to show “Mr. Safra” the “proof of funds” for the project, which “Mr. Safra” claimed he needed to start the “paperwork.”

“Despite our grudging acceptance of Trust Wallet’s ‘evidence’, we went ahead and set up a new Trust Wallet account at home on a device we don’t often use when interacting with them. Our logic led us to believe that even if we lost our private keys or seed phrases, the money would still be safe,” Shams explained.

When we first met, the three of us sat across from each other and put four million USDC into the Trust Wallet. “Mr. Safra” requested to see the current balances in the Trust Wallet app, at which point he pulled the phone from him and pretended to “take some pictures.”

Shams clarified that he was of the opinion that everything was in order since “Mr. Safra” did not have access to any private keys or seed phrases.

But when “Mr. Safra” left the conference room, ostensibly to consult with his other banking colleagues, he disappeared without a trace, never to be seen again. Then Shams saw the cash disappear.

“We were never able to locate him again. After a few minutes, the money disappeared from the wallet.

Shams reported the theft to a local Rome police station almost shortly after it occurred, and a few days later sent an Internet Crime Reporting (IC3) form to the US Federal Bureau of Investigation.