Mutant Ape Ripoff NFT Creator Pleads Guilty to $3 Million Fraud Scheme

According to Cointelegraph, Aurelien Michel, the creator of the Mutant Ape Planet NFT collection, which copies the popular Mutant Ape Yacht Club (MAYC) collection by Yuga Labs, pleaded guilty to wire fraud in a New York federal court. Michel admitted to defrauding investors of $3 million and performing a rug pull. The team behind the MAYC knock-off falsely promised rewards and benefits to their investors and intentionally failed to deliver on their promises. They instead diverted the proceeds and used them for personal gain. Michel admitted to the rug pull through social media and now faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison. Users of NFT marketplace OpenSea have reportedly received emails containing malicious links from attackers pretending to be OpenSea. Community members took to social media, reporting that they received phishing attempts. Meanwhile, OpenSea assured its users through a post on X (formerly Twitter) that there was no hack. However, a developer responded that while there may not be a vulnerability through the company’s smart contracts, the developer received a phishing email, suggesting that “dev contacts have been exfiltrated from OpenSea.” The average daily transaction fee for the Bitcoin network surpassed Ethereum as the market showed a renewed appetite for Bitcoin Ordinals, a tool for creating NFT-like assets and BRC-20 tokens. On Nov. 20, Bitcoin’s average daily fee reached $10.34, while Ethereum stood at an average of $8.43. Since Oct. 24, the community has created over six million Bitcoin Ordinals assets, which led to around $30 million in BTC fees being redistributed to the network. Digital game distributor G2A launched an NFT marketplace focused on Web3 games. In a press release, the company highlighted that it aims to expand its offerings by diving into Web3. According to G2A Capital Group CEO Bartosz Skwarczek, the company has been following the development of Web3 gaming since Cryptokitties. Skwarczek said that players are familiar with blockchain gaming, and many are already involved.