A memecoin inspired by an Elon Musk tweet has been the latest defi project to “rug pull” its investors, with $749,000 in Ethereum drained from its coffers.

Floki Inu coin was launched less than two weeks ago, alongside Floki Shiba, Baby Floki Inu and FlokiEverToken, after the eccentric billionaire tweeted he would name his Shiba Inu dog Floki.

It wasn’t really clear whether Musk was actually getting a dog, but the Ethereum token quickly skyrocketed in value.

Just as fast, it encountered problems, however, as hodlers realised there were issues with the contract.

“In reverse Robin Hood style the developer was taxing holders 20% on transactions to funnel their funds into his own wallet, holding these funds for ransom and the supply was inflating fast,” the project wrote on Medium.

The team created a new Ethereum contract — Floki Inu v2 — and hodlers were migrating their tokens when disaster struck yesterday.

An insider nearly completely drained the project’s liquidity pool, taking 236 Ethereum – worth roughly A$749,000. He or she left it with just 0.25 Ether (worth about $800), according to Etherscan

The funds were transferred to Tornado Cash, an Ethereum “tumbling” service that allows users to maintain their privacy by making subsequent transfers untraceable.

Disputed messages were circulating on social media that appeared to show New Zealand-based project leader “Uniswap Detective” discussing with “Marvin” how to scam their investors before the rugpull.

“I don’t know why everyone just let us come in here to take this shit over, lol, legit idiots, this is free cash for us, no point in being an influencer anymore if we’re in a bear market, one last exit scam for a decent buck,” one message from “Marvin” reads.

“Retards init mate haha,” Uniswap Detective replies.

“so many people have been exit scamming, we need this to be flawless, a grand exit,” says Marvin.

Uniswap Detective, a Twitter influencer with 46,800 followers, said he had been set up.

Needless to say, not everyone was buying this story about the messages being fake.