In an interesting development, the creator of the fraud NFT collection “Mutant Ape Planet” Aurelien Michel is about to avoid a jail sentence following a recent court ruling. Nonetheless, the defendant has been ordered to forgo over $1 million as punishment for conducting a rug pull.
Mutant Ape Creator To Pay $15,000, Escapes Prison Sentence On Technicality
In January 2023, the US Attorney’s Office, Eastern District of Latest York rolled out an indictment against Michel accusing the latter of defrauding unsuspecting investors of $2.9 million via the sale of the “Mutant Ape Planet” NFTs, modeled after the favored “Mutant Ape Yacht Club” collection.
The French national had marketed these digital assets to several individuals in 2022 with guarantees of several rewards comparable to merchandise and metaverse land designed to spice up the worth of those NFTs upon acquisition.
Nonetheless, Michel reneged on these guarantees as he perpetrated a rug pull, diverting all raised funds from investors to non-public expenses. In November 2023, the malicious NFT creator entered a guilty plea to the costs of wire fraud presented by the US prosecutors leading to a possible prison sentence of 5 years.
Nonetheless, in a Bloomberg report on November 1, US Judge Margo Brodie handed a one-month sentence to Michel, which has been served following the defendant’s arrest in 2022. Moreover, the Frenchman is anticipated to pay a $15,000 superb in addition to forfeit $1.4 million of his wealth.
Judge Brodie’s sentence is considerably light as compared to the prosecutors’ request for a 37-month prison sentence. In his defense, Michel’s lawyers had argued he be spared from a jail term as all investors did receive a “digital artwork” in keeping with the definition of an NFT that’s designed to verify unique ownership of assorted digital art forms.
The US Judge appeared to have aligned with the defending counsel as she said to Michel:
The loss amount is unclear. There’s no doubt you and your co-conspirators ultimately gained or not less than received $2.9 million from the project. But there’s also no dispute everyone who purchased an NFT obtained or received something of value. What that value is, is unclear.
In response to Bloomberg, Michel’s case is one among the three US indictments of NFT fraud and the primary to acquire a court ruling.
NFT Sales Reach $356 Million In October
In response to data from NFT data aggregator CryptoSlam, the entire NFT sales in October climbed to $356.62 million representing a 17.47% gain on the values recorded from September. The reported sales volume of the last month was generated from 7,231,056 transactions involving 964,210 unique sellers and 616,546 unique buyers.
Featured image from Bigney Law Firm, chart from Tradingview