Successfully Tiping NFT Collectors Amounting To Rp45.5 Billion, The Creator Of Mutant Ape Planet Was Arrested By Police

NFT developer Mutant Ape Planet imitated the concept of the Duntant Ape Yacht Club (MAYC) to launch its rugby pull action. (Photo; Doc. OpenSea)

JAKARTA The popularity of NFT by Yuga Labs, Mutant Ape Yacht Club (MAYC), apparently used by criminals to launch their actions. The perpetrators deliberately imitated the name and appearance of NFT MAYC as Mutant Ape Planet.

Unmitigated, the criminals who imitated MAYC managed to deceive investors of US$2.9 million (equivalent to Rp45.5 billion) from their rugby pull scheme. The police managed to arrest the mock NFT developer at John F. Kennedy International Airport, New York, on January 4 yesterday.

Authorities managed to reveal the identity of the perpetrator who is a French citizen named Aurelien Michel. He was accused of committing a fraud scheme called a rugby pull. Funds from defrauding investors were used by himself.

"Motant purchasers Ape Planet NFT think they are investing in a new trendy collection, but they are deceived and do not receive promised benefits," said a press release from the authorities.

According to Cointelegraph, Internal Revenue Service Agent Thomas Fattorusso quoted a press release from the Department of Justice as saying that "Michel deceived investors by creating false representations, among others, prizes, tokens with staking features, and a collection of merchandise." Michel withdrew the funds after nonfungible tokens (NFT) were sold out, the release said.

According to the statement, Michel acknowledged to the community through social media chat that he had done a rugby pull, saying "we never intended to (do a segment pull scheme) but the community became too toxic."

The mock NFT collection from the popularIST Ape Yacht Club collection consists of 6,797 NFTs stored on the Ethereum blockchain. The collection has a total of 567 Ether.

When I found out the reality was that the founders didn't actually hold the promised utility that caused people to lose their trust and then one day the founders actually disappeared without a note, nothing. Things are tilting here as many people leave the community, "wrote a mock NFT buyer on a Twitter account using the pseudonym Perfect Electro (@electro_perfect), January 5, 2023.

This pull rugby scam often occurs in the digital asset industry, including cryptocurrencies and NFT. DappRadar reports that the pull rugby action is the most common type of network that occurred over the past year. As of about 119 incidents using the pull rugby scheme occurred and the perpetrators managed to steal investor funds of around 200 million US dollars.

For information, rugby pull is a term that refers to a fraud scheme carried out by digital asset developers that suddenly launch projects and withdraw investor funds. Perpetrators usually just leave their crypto projects or NFTs.

A similar example occurred in the Squid Token (SQUID) crypto project that occurred in November 2021. Therug pull fraud actor took advantage of the popularity of the Netflix film series, Squid Game, to then develop a crypto project called SQUID. After the token was launched, apparently many people bought it. Not long after, the perpetrator took away investor funds and left the Squid Token project.