Mutant Ape Planet creator arrested in NY for alleged $2.9M NFT 'fraud'
The developer of a Mutant Ape Yacht Club knock-off collection — Mutant Ape Planet — has been arrested in New York, charged with allegedly “defrauding” investors of $2.9 million in a "rug pull scheme."
The arrest took place on Jan. 4 at the John F. International Airport in New York, with homeland security agent Ivan J. Arvelo alleging that French national “Aurelien Michel perpetrated a rug pull scheme” and stole “nearly $3 million from investors for his own personal use," stating:
Internal Revenue Service agent Thomas Fattorusso was also cited in a press release from the Department of Justice, alleging that “Michel defrauded investors by making false representations of, amongst other things, giveaways, tokens with staking features, and merchandise collections,” before withdrawing the funds once the NFTs were sold out.
According to the statement, Michel is understood to have admitted to the community via a social media chat that he had perpetrated a rug pull, saying “we never intended to rug but the community went way too toxic.”
The collection — a knock-off of the popular Mutant Ape Yacht Club NFT collection — consists of 6,797 NFTs stored on the Ethereum blockchain with 567 Ether (ETH) worth of sales but has seen its average price and sales volume crater since it launched in Jan. 2022.
Following the arrest, holders of the collection have been sharing their side of the story via Twitter, noting that James had attempted to blame his departure on the community who were becoming skeptical due to the lack of activity.
When I’m reality what was happening was the founders were actually not holding to their promised utility leading in to people losing trust and then one day the founders completely disappeared with no notes, nothing.
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