Glenn MC: A Mystery of Miscreance (In Minecraft)

If you find yourself trying to stave off the coming sounds of Hallmark Christmas specials or Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas is You," then I have a rabbit hole just for you.

Let's play a quick game. If you have a Twitter account (not set to private of course), send a tweet about Minecraft and wait a few minutes. Chances are you'll be greeted with a notification like this:

As Twitter user @Nervatel discovered, this account will like any tweet containing the word "Minecraft" or related terms. Bot accounts like these are seen everywhere on the platform, so this shouldn't be anything extraordinary.

What's so special?

Well, take a look at the account details. The bio and website both link to a supposed Minecraft Skyblock Discord server, but what caught my eye was the Twitter handle: @GlennHammondKY.

If you're like me, you might recognize the simple full legal name and state abbreviation pattern that many politicians use. Call me a hater, but I don't think Glenn Hammond, a personal and work injury attorney who ran for a seat in the Kentucky State Senate, could make a Minecraft YouTube channel with over 200,000 subscribers—

Oh, did I not mention that?

There's clearly a lot to unpack here, but first, let's take a step back and focus on the Twitter account. Using the Wayback Machine, it's possible to look at any saved "snapshots" of the account. Lucky for us, we found some! The earliest capture is from October 20, 2020. The account was first created in January of that same year for Mr. Hammond's bid for Kentucky State Senate.

At this point, the account held only 160 followers and followed 534 accounts. These numbers stayed nearly the same for two years with the last normal capture coming in March of 2022.

The next capture from September 2022 shows a completely different image including a massive jump in followers to ~10,300. The final capture comes from October 7 with about 400 more followers and leads to the present-day count of ~18,400.

Account Change

Sometime between March and September 29, ownership of the account changed. The details of how are obviously unknown, but it wouldn't be outlandish to assume the account details were stolen or sold to obtain that luscious verification badge.

A few more notes to add to the account's Twitter activity: the capture from early October shows a different bio than what is displayed today. "Minecraft YouTuber with 2.5M subscribers. 7M on @tiktok_us | Working on building @SkyCubeio."

As you've seen in the image above, 2.5 million is a bit of an exaggeration, and I've found no evidence of a TikTok account. As for SkyCube, there was a listing for a server with that exact IP address (skycube.io), but it appears to be dead along with its non-functioning website.

The Discord server linked on all versions of the account was bare, to say the least. Users didn't have posting privileges, and the only two posts in the server were by the owner "Chxrlie" trying to build some semblance of hype about this nonexistent beta to a most-likely nonexistent Minecraft server.

Connection to NFTs and Scams

Moving to the YouTube channel tells us a bit more about who is behind the scenes. The only content on the channel itself was six shorts that seemed to be complete reuploads of other shorts or TikToks. The custom channel URL displays ".../c/NFTinfo/," and the email listed for business inquiries belongs to a "SeanNFT."

A Twitter account does exist with this handle; it belongs to someone who is a self-described "Software developer who likes to build bots." If it wasn't apparent already by the custom URL, they're also very into NFT culture. It's definitely safe to say that this account may have been behind the Glenn MC Twitter bot account.

There's just one more problem though…: Putting the URL to the About section on the Glenn MC YouTube channel into the Wayback Machine reveals that in March of 2022, the channel was owned by someone named Cwapz, a creator who uploads "original NFT content." Whatever that is.

Their Twitter account @TheRealCwapz has been suspended so we don't have access to it, but the search bar still shows posts that mention him. Let's just say he's done a fair amount of scamming promotions in early 2022 (around March). It also seems that SeanNFT could be involved in one way or another.

But wait! There's more! Bringing the dramatic orchestra behind me to a crescendo, I typed "Cwapz" into the YouTube search bar and was greeted by a load of videos calling out Cwapz for being part of a free Robux scam.

Connecting the Dots

Remember the owner of the SkyCube Discord server named Chxrlie? It's just another alias of Cwapz's! Every search result was dated to last year, giving us a more expanded timeline. This was the final piece of our investigation.

Putting everything back together, we can see the potential for a perilous picture. After getting called out and exposed for scamming kids on Roblox in 2021, Cwapz needed a quick out to continue a source of easy money. He turned to the NFT scene, either through an affinity for get-rich-quick schemes or because it seemed like the next logical step. He's called out by a few people on Twitter around March of 2022 and then disappears once again.

Around the same time, the Twitter account once belonging to Kentucky lawyer and politician Glenn Martin Hammond changed ownership and became the account for SkyCube. It was an easy way to gain a verified checkmark and Minecraft was host to a massive pool of potential victims due to the content boom it experienced with the rise of creators like Dream.

The account changed details and settled on the Glenn MC persona, a Minecraft YouTuber who stole the art for his fairly photogenic profile picture. The account, programmed to like any tweet that mentioned "Minecraft'' or like terms, skyrocketed into the relevant circles and gained plenty of followers.

Cwapz's YouTube channel underwent a "soft reset" as videos were deleted and details were changed to fit this new narrative for Glenn MC. A few TikToks or YouTube shorts are reuploaded onto the channel to create the illusion of a proper channel. Sounds about right?

That brings us to today. The date is October 30, 2022, and the supposed skyblock server beta access opens in six days. The mystery has been solved for now.

If you or someone you know is involved in or knows about Glenn MC, please inform them that it is a suspicious account and to be careful. If something seems too good to be true, it likely is. Be safe online and take care not to divulge personal information.