Fontes Situation Evidence Archive

The Zombie Inu ($ZINU) smart contract contains two special functions (ManualSwap and ManualSend) that allow the project's operators to extract money from the contract at any time. These functions have been used 58,806 times since the contract was deployed, sending ETH (Ethereum cryptocurrency) to two specific wallet addresses that were hardcoded into the contract from the very beginning. The person who wrote the contract chose these two addresses before the project even launched — every fee collected from investors would automatically flow to them.

We traced where that money went. The total estimated extraction is approximately $288,000. Here is the complete fund flow.

The money left these two wallets through a combination of direct exchange deposits and single-use "intermediary" wallets. An intermediary wallet is a fresh address that receives exactly one deposit, then immediately forwards it to an exchange — it's a simple attempt to create one degree of separation, but it does not actually hide anything because the transactions are all recorded on the blockchain.

The operator did NOT use any real privacy tools — no Tornado Cash (a crypto mixing service), no privacy chains, no sophisticated laundering. Just fresh wallets as a one-hop buffer. A blockchain forensics firm would trace this in hours.

The most intense period of fund movement was the week of November 21, 2021 — right at the peak of the cryptocurrency bull market, when 1 ETH was worth approximately $4,200–$4,800. During this single week, Fee Wallet #2 dispersed 260+ ETH across approximately 20 different addresses. At peak prices, this could represent over $1 million in value being moved in one week.

Notable transfers during this period:

• 65 ETH (~$280,000) to a single wallet
• 59.3 ETH (~$255,000) to another wallet
• 57.156 ETH (~$245,000) to another wallet
• 15.56 ETH directly to BitMart exchange
• ~7.8 ETH directly to Binance
• Multiple transfers of 5–20 ETH each to various addresses

This was clearly a planned extraction — cashing out at peak market prices. The question is who did it and whether Ernie was that person, or whether it was someone else on the team (like Dale the developer, who would have had the technical ability to deploy the contract and set these wallet addresses).

The on-chain evidence raises a critical question: who controlled these wallets?

Ernie's title was CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) — a marketing role, not a technical or financial one. The person who deployed the ZINU contract and set up the fee extraction would need to be a developer with Solidity (smart contract programming) skills. That points more toward Dale Houk (the lead developer, alias "zinudev") than toward Ernie.

However, Ernie's behavior raises questions:

• He borrowed money from Brian for rent while the fee wallets were receiving thousands in ETH — was he really broke, or hiding funds?
• He "holds ZINU hostage — he kept the domain" (per Brian) — suggesting more control than a typical CMO
• He has two Splendor validators that @SPLITweb3 claims are "exactly valued at what's owed"
• He promised repayment from Splendor proceeds, suggesting he expected to have access to project funds
• In the phone call, he says Todor and Ralph directed him to work with "Nick" for OTC deals — suggesting he was involved in fund movement

The Coinbase subpoena would resolve this definitively. If the Coinbase account behind the deployer and fee wallets belongs to Ernie, he was the financial operator, not just the marketing guy. If it belongs to Dale or someone else, Ernie may have been a mid-level participant who didn't control the actual money flows.