UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE HAS FILLED CHARGES AGAINST A PROMOTER OF THE RUG PULL SCAM PROJECT BALLER APE CLUB!
In what looks to be an alleged rug pull scam, the U.S. Justice Department filed charges on Thursday, June 30, against a person promoting “Baller Ape Club” NFT. Five individuals allegedly involved in cryptocurrency fraud schemes that collectively collected more than $130 million from investors have been named by the U.S. DoJ.
The U.S. Department of Justice accused 26-year-old Vietnamese national Le Anh Tuan of wire fraud and international money laundering using “Baller Ape” NFTs in a Thursday statement. According to the Justice Department, Tuan was also accused of conspiring to steal more than $2.6 million from investors.
Baller Ape NFTs with various cartoon figures were sold by the Baller Ape Club. Unfortunately, Tuan and his fellow conspirators pulled a rug-pull shortly after selling the first batch of NFTs, shutting down the project and fleeing with investors’ money.
The Justice Department discovered that Tuan and his other conspirators used “chain-chopping” to launder investors’ money based on blockchain analytics. This well-known money laundering technique involves changing a coin into other forms of token and moving those funds among different blockchains utilizing decentralized exchange services to hide the funding trail. Tuan can also be sentenced to 40 years in jail if found guilty.
The U.S. Justice Department filed separate accusations against three other people in addition to Tuan for allegedly raising more than $100 million through a global Ponzi scheme. Emerson Pires and Flavio Goncalves, from Brazil, are charged with operating the fraudulent cryptocurrency investment website EmpiresX. Joshua David Nicholas, a native of Florida, has also been charged with acting as a “head trader.”
