In a world notorious for fakes and fraud, people might be expected to be on high alert for deception—but NFT fans had the wool pulled over their eyes by a fake Snoop Dogg at a huge conference in New York City this week.
Fair.xyz—a startup founded by engineers from Meta, Instagram, and Goldman Sachs that aims “to build the best consumer products in Web3”—hired a Snoop Dogg look-alike to drum up publicity for their brand at the NFT.NYC conference on Tuesday, the Guardian reported.
The impostor was dubbed “Doop Snogg” and, with the help of a glued-on mustache, fake security guard, and rented Cadillac Escalade SUV, took on the persona of the rapper, heading to the conference that has been described as “the Super Bowl of NFTs.”
Fans were fooled, with passersby on the city streets and NFT enthusiasts at the event swarming around “Doop” to get a view of the man they believed to be the famous NFT-loving rapper.
Snoop Dogg himself acknowledged the prank in a tweet on Wednesday.
Representatives for Snoop Dogg and Fair.xyz were not available for comment when contacted by Fortune.
The Grammy-nominated musician and entrepreneur is a known lover of NFTs, and has doubled down on his support for them even after the market has plummeted more than 90% from its peak and been at the heart of countless cases of fraud, scams, and theft.
This week, Snoop Dogg filed two trademark applications related to virtual cannabis NFTs, and earlier this month announced that he had bought two NFTs created by ex–Barclays trader Ovie Faruq.
Last September, Snoop Dogg revealed himself as NFT kingpin “Cozomo de’ Medici” with an estimated $17 million in NFTs.
He went on to launch the “Snoopverse” in December, with someone paying almost half a million dollars to be his virtual next-door neighbor.
After acquiring Death Row Records earlier this year, the rapper said the label would be steered to incorporate NFTs and the metaverse under his ownership.
