Nigerian musician Davido has become the latest victim of a rug-pull orchestrated by Sahil Arora, an Indian national known for his involvement in various pump and dump schemes.
With a massive following of over 15.3 million on 
and 7.9 million monthly listeners on Spotify, Davido launched his own memecoin called “DAVIDO” on May 29th. The coin was introduced with the tagline “The pump stops when time stops.”
The token was created on the popular Solana memecoin generator pump.fun, receiving 7.5 SOL as initial capital. A transfer of 7 SOL was used to purchase 203 million DAVIDO tokens, representing 20.3% of the total token supply.
Davido actively promoted the token to his followers on 
, encouraging them to hold onto DAVIDO with the expectation of reaching a $30 million market cap. However, just 11 hours later, he sold 121.88 million DAVIDO tokens for 2,791 $SOL, equivalent to approximately $474,000 at that time. This led to a drastic crash in the token’s price by over 90% from its peak value of $0.003297.
Currently, the token is trading at $0.002343, down 37% from its all-time high. Lookonchain also observed a transfer of 20 million DAVIDO tokens to an address labeled “dead1111…1111.”
The sudden price drop has sparked concerns of a potential rug pull scheme orchestrated by Davido, who has yet to address the situation.
In a similar trend, celebrity-themed tokens have faced scrutiny recently, with instances of these tokens being dumped on unsuspecting investors. American personality Caitlyn Jenner also fell victim to a pump and dump scheme with her SOL-based meme coin “JENNER” on pump.fun.
It was later revealed that Sahil Arora, the alleged scammer behind these incidents, took advantage of celebrities’ lack of knowledge in the crypto space to profit from these tokens.
Arora was also involved in a token presale scam under the guise of Australian artist Iggy Azalea, launching the IGGY coin that saw a massive surge but ultimately turned into a pump-and-dump scheme, with the token plummeting over 70% from its initial high.
Furthermore, American rapper Rich the Kid accused Arora of hacking his 
account to promote a scam token named “RICH” under his name.
Reports have surfaced indicating that Arora had a list of celebrities he claimed he could secure promotions for, with endorsement fees ranging from $6,000 to $315,000 for notable names like Justin Bieber, Kim Kardashian, and Lindsay Lohan. Davido was also on the list, priced at $8,000, suggesting a possible link to the rug pull incident involving his memecoin.
In another development, the SPCT token saw a 43% plunge amidst allegations of a rug pull, further highlighting the risks associated with celebrity-backed tokens in the crypto space.