U.S. Charges Three in Connection With Evolved Apes NFT Scam
Summary
The United States Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York has charged Mohamed-Amin Atcha, Mohamed Rilaz Waleedh, and Daood Hassan with wire fraud and money laundering in connection with a 2021 non-fungible token (NFT) scam known as Evolved Apes. The scam involved a collection of 10,000 unique NFTs and a promised video game that was never developed. The anonymous developer disappeared a week after launch, taking with them 798 ether, equivalent to $3 million. This type of scam, known as a rug pull, has resulted in losses of over $14.5 billion since 2011. The largest such scam was by South African digital assets investment fund Africrypt, which disappeared with 69,000 bitcoins in 2021, worth nearly $4.8 billion.
