As the crypto market gains a stronger footing in the world of finance, plenty of people are looking to get in and make some significant profits. Unfortunately, a lack of knowledge about the industry means that people trust just about anyone when it comes to crypto advice.
This is despite the SEC advising people against trusting people’s financial opinions when they aren’t experts. One popular name among these crypto scams is Lark Davis. There is much speculation surrounding the YouTuber and what he was involved in, prompting many to ask, ‘Is Lark Davis a crypto scammer?’ Let’s have a detailed look at the facts.
Pump and Dumb Scheme Involving UMB
One of the earliest examples of Lark Davis shilling tokens that had no real value is that of UMB tokens. Belonging to the Umbrella Network, UMB tokens had a low value when they launched initially, but Lark Davis managed to change that through his influence. Online sleuths like ZachXBT managed to uncover the truth behind Davis’ shady transactions by keeping a close eye on his wallet’s history.
The financial investigator noticed that in early February 2021, Lark Davis received around 62,000 UMB tokens at their official launch. Then, just a few hours later, he tweets about the token launch on his account. In just the next couple of hours, he dumped all of his tokens and gets $136,000 in return. This shows that the entire project was built to be a pump and dump scheme that would benefit no one except for the influencer and people who started the scam.
Other Cases: $DOWS and $SHOPX
Later on, he makes a tweet, claiming that Shadows and Splyt will moon, giving his followers a false sense of hope. In March 2021, he tweeted about how Shadows is the Synthetix of Polka Dot, and generated hype about how it was set to launch on Uniswap in a couple of hours.
On the day of the launch, Lark Davis’ crypto wallet history shows that he dumped his 24,000 DOWS tokens, which had gained a value of $56,000. Just a couple of months later in December 2021, the DOWS project was abandoned by the development team. Coincidence?
Around the same time, he received a massive transaction of 120,000 SHOPX tokens. And a day later, he made a tweet about how the token ‘exploded’ on the listing, which hyped up his followers and encouraged them to buy as well. However, his crypto wallet says a different story. As Davis was making tweets about the SHOPX tokens, he was also dumping his 120,000 SHOPX tokens. Overall, he received $435,000 for the dump.
Lied About Never Getting Paid for Promotions
While posing as a crypto expert, Lark Davis used his YouTube channel to promote shady tokens to his unsuspecting followers. And if that wasn’t bad enough, he also claimed that he didn’t receive any payment or compensation for his reviews or promotion.
Overall, financial investigators and online sleuths like ZachXBT were able to find eight instances of collaborations that allowed Lark Davis to profit. Collectively, he got $1.2 million from the tokens he dumped, and this was just what was visible through his crypto wallet.
While he claims that he didn’t receive compensation, you have to wonder what else he could stand to gain from such a partnership.
Bottom Line
While many people looked up to Lark Davis, he turned out to be a fraud that manipulated his followers and pitched tokens under false pretenses. This led to the price of tokens inflating dramatically, and he was the only one to profit from all of it.
Needless to say, it’s important to do your research before deciding to trust financial advice or opinions from anyone on the internet. After all, just because it worked for them doesn’t mean that it’ll work for you. So instead of believing anyone who calls himself an expert, try to gain some knowledge about the crypto industry yourself.
