Blockchain investigator ZachXBT has accused four prominent crypto traders – TraderNJ, PetaByte, XO, and Trader SZ – of participating in a pump-and-dump scheme. The traders allegedly profited from the gains at the expense of their followers. ZachXBT's exposé focuses on Trader NJ and PetaByte, who are suspected of engaging in deceptive practices with several crypto projects, including CBOT and BabyShib. Evidence from Telegram messages suggests that the traders requested a significant portion of the token supply for promotional purposes, only to sell them for more than $115,000 in a few days.
In the second part of the exposé, Trader SZ and Trader XO are implicated in a similar pump-and-dump scheme involving the Ethereum-based PAAL AI token. The investigator discovered that PetaByte and NJ had linked their wallet addresses from their involvement with CBOT and BABYSHIB shills to PAAL, making it easily traceable. Trader SZ reportedly dumped all of his tokens for more than $130k, while Trader NJ's wallet had already dumped all of his PAAL for over $120k.