Three 23-year-old citizens of Great Britain are facing charges of fraud and money laundering amounting to $2.7 million in connection with a fraudulent NFT project. Mohamed-Amin Acha, Mohamed Rilaz Valid, and Daud Hassan allegedly deceived investors by promoting a NFT collection called “Evolved Apes.”
The NFT collection consists of digital images of cartoon Neanderthals in thousands of variations, totaling around 10,000 NFTs, as per Opensea.
Under the pseudonym Evil Ape, the developers claimed that the project needed investments to create video games based on the NFTs, with the promise of increasing their value. Investors were lured in but soon realized they had fallen victim to the scam.
In 2021, the trio disappeared along with the project’s Twitter account and official website. Investigators estimated that approximately $2.7 million were stolen from investors through various cryptocurrency transactions to personal accounts.
According to the US Department of Justice, the creators of Evolved Apes reneged on their promise to use the raised funds for developing video games, abandoning the project and pocketing the money instead.
The scheme orchestrated by the trio involved enticing investors to pour money into the project, artificially inflating the token’s value and liquidity. Once a substantial sum was attained, the creators pulled the rug from under the investors, causing a sharp drop in token value and resulting in financial losses, a tactic commonly referred to as a “Rug Pull.”