24-Year-Old Mutant Ape Planet Promoter Conned Investors, According to Prosecutors
Authorities from the United States in New York detained a French national living in the United Arab Emirates and accused him of cheating investors out of more than $2.9 million by selling them Mutant Ape Planet NFTs.
At New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport on Wednesday, authorities seized 24-year-old Aurelien Michel. For allegedly pulling a $2.9 million rug, he is accused of fraud.
Rug pulling is a type of scam when the person creating non-fungible tokens or another digital asset solicits investments from gullible victims before abruptly abandoning the project and keeping the investors’ money.
Under the plan, Michel encouraged buyers to buy Mutant Ape Planet NFTs by making several fictitious promises of incentives and advantages intended to increase demand for the buyers’ newly acquired assets and raise the value of the NFT.
“None of the benefits that were promised were given. Instead, millions of dollars worth of bitcoin from NFT buyers was misappropriated for Michel’s personal gain “According to the US Justice Department.
According to the court statement, Michel, under the alias “James,” acknowledged pulling the rug out from under the MAP Discord buyers when they became suspicious.
Michel is accused of exploiting IP addresses that the UAE provider supplied to him to access Discord servers.
According to Thomas Fattorusso, acting special agent-in-charge, Internal Revenue Service-Criminal Investigation, New York, “his arrest means he will now bear the costs of his own acts.”
ZachXBT, a blockchain researcher, asserted Michel also pulled the wool over everyone’s eyes in the well-known Crazy Camels and Fashion Ape NFT collections.
ZachXBT followed the 356.44 ETH transaction leaving the Mutant Ape Planet smart contracts and discovered Michel’s CEX address listed in the court record. ZachXBT also found that Fashion Ape NFT team members collected $1.1 million from holders while Crazy Camels received $1.6 million.
According to a survey from blockchain research company Chainalysis, rug pulls made for 37% of all cryptocurrency scam earnings in 2021, or $2.8 million in bitcoin, up from just 1% in 2020.
Two 20-year-olds were detained and charged in Los Angeles, California in March 2022 for planning to conduct wire fraud and money laundering as part of a $1 million NFT conspiracy. 20-Year-Olds Charged in NFT ‘Rug Pull’ Scam Case, for example.
