Photo: An NFT, or non-fungible token, is displayed on a billboard in Time Square, New York, Nov. 4, 2021. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Written by Dana Sanchez
Jul 05, 2022
A promoter of the Baller Ape Club NFT has been accused of stealing $2.6 million in the biggest NFT rug-pull ever charged.
Le Anh Tuan, a 26-year-old Vietnamese citizen, has been charged with conspiring to steal $2.6 million from investors, the Department of Justice said in a statement on June 30. Tuan was allegedly part of the Baller Ape Club, which sold NFTs in the form of cartoon apes.
The highly anticipated Baller Ape Club NFT drop went live on Oct. 1, 2021, with 5,000 apes available for mint at the price of two Solana.
Shortly after the mint was sold out, Tuan and other unnamed conspirators did a “rug pull,” ending the so-called investment project, deleting its website and Twitter accounts, and stealing the investors’ money.
The DOJ described Baller Ape Club’s activities as “a global Ponzi scheme involving the sale of unregistered crypto securities, and a fraudulent initial coin offering.”
The DOJ has charged more than 50 cases of crypto-related scams in 2021 alone but has mostly ignored the NFT sub-sector, which has recorded more than $25 billion in net sales, Jimmy Aki reported for Business2Community.
The Justice Department simultaneously announced five other charges including three people who allegedly raised more than $100 million in a global crypto Ponzi scheme and two involving a fraudulent investment fund that traded on crypto exchanges and a fake initial coin offering.
Tuan and his co-conspirators laundered investors’ funds by “chain-hopping” — a form of money laundering where one type of coin is converted to another and funds are moved across multiple crypto blockchains and crypto swap services. This helped hide Baller Ape Club’s trail of stolen funds, DOJ said.
“These cases serve as a crucial reminder that some con artists hide behind trendy buzzwords, but at the end of the day they are simply seeking to separate people from their money,” said U.S. Attorney Tracy L. Wilkison for the Central District of California, in a prepared statement.
Photo: An NFT, or non-fungible token, is displayed on a billboard in Time Square, New York, Nov. 4, 2021. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
#1 Macroeconomic Newsletter For Black America
document.getElementById( “ak_js_1” ).setAttribute( “value”, ( new Date() ).getTime() );
© 2022 The Moguldom Nation. All Rights Reserved.
Do Not Sell My Personal Information
© 2022 The Moguldom Nation. All Rights Reserved.
Do Not Sell My Personal Information
