SafeMoon

SafeMoon Marketer Allegedly Pockets $12 Million From Pump and Dump Campaign

  • Crypto proponent and YouTuber Coffeezilla called out Safemoon’s former marketing lead for shady transactions
  • Coffeezilla says the project member identified as Ben Phillips led a pump and dump scheme for months
  • Phillips allegedly made $12 million dollars from misleading investors on social media

Ben Phillips, a social media influencer and ex-promotions officer for SafeMoon has been accused of making over $12 million dollars from an elaborate pump and dump campaign. 

According to YouTube content creator Stephen “Coffeezilla” Findseisen, Phillips leveraged a massive social media following on Twitter to convince investors of SafeMoon’s bullish movements while selling hefty portions of the token as prices went up. 

The altcoin launched back in March 2021 and garnered considerable hype on social media, partly thanks to Phillips and his over 700,000 Twitter followers. Phillips also served as the Chief Marketing Officer for the project which ran on the Binance Smart Chain (BSC).

Shortly after the launch, the project’s Vice President Charles Karony reportedly stepped down in pursuit of a college degree. Around the same time, a class-action lawsuit built on pump and dump allegations was filed against the token’s team. 

Investor Funds Not Safu As Ben Phillips Dumps SafeMoon Tokens For Months

Findseisen started his analysis by highlighting a series of SafeMoon buys by Phillips between March 2021 and August 2021. According to the YouTuber, Phillips spent approximately $4 million dollars accumulating his hefty holdings through PancakeSwap and aimed to dump the tokens at higher prices.

Plotting out when Ben sold, and how much he sold, we see that even at the beginning of Safemoon, when he first joined, he wanted to dump as fast as possible. Ben’s biggest sells are in April, even while he appears to be at his most “bullish.

SafeMoon Marketer Allegedly Pockets $12 Million From Pump and Dump Campaign 13
Ben Phillips’ SafeMoon Buys and Sells From March-December 2021 (Source: Stephen “Coffeezilla” Findseisen)

Coffeezilla stressed that Phillip’s main strategy was to present a bullish stance on social media. This supposedly triggered FOMO among investors and pumped SafeMoon’s price as liquidity flowed into the token. 

Indeed, Ben Phillips deployed this tactic repeatedly on Twitter between March 2021 and December 2021. An excerpt from Findseisen’s analysis reads:

For example, he says “F*CK LOOSE HANDED #SAFEMOON #DOGE WHALES” on the 29th of March, even as he’s about to begin a spree of selling for ~$8.8 million dollars in April. This public stance of thinking the coin was going up, as he was secretly selling, will become a pattern of behavior.

Following the alleged pump and dump campaign, Phillips made a whopping $12.14 million dollars in profits over a 10-month period. Since then, the social media influencer has abandoned the project and opened a YouTube prank channel, per reports.