Two men arrested for $1.1 million NFT ‘rug pull’ scam

A Frosties NFT avatar. | Frosties US government prosecutors have charged two men with fraud and money laundering over a cryptocurrency “rug pull” scheme. Ethan Nguyen and Andre Llacuna allegedly earned around $1.1 million by selling non-fungible tokens (or NFTs) based on cartoon-like characters called “Frosties.” After selling the NFTs, they shut down the project and transferred its funds to a series of separate crypto wallets, leaving Frosties owners bereft of promised rewards. According to the criminal complaint, the Internal Revenue Service, Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI), and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) began investigating Frosties in January, shortly after receiving complaints about the scam. Frosties was a buzzy project whose 8,888 NFTs — priced at the... Continue reading…

Two men arrested for $1.1 million NFT ‘rug pull’ scam
A picture of a cartoon character with a top hat holding playing cards.
A Frosties NFT avatar. | Frosties

US government prosecutors have charged two men with fraud and money laundering over a cryptocurrency “rug pull” scheme. Ethan Nguyen and Andre Llacuna allegedly earned around $1.1 million by selling non-fungible tokens (or NFTs) based on cartoon-like characters called “Frosties.” After selling the NFTs, they shut down the project and transferred its funds to a series of separate crypto wallets, leaving Frosties owners bereft of promised rewards.

According to the criminal complaint, the Internal Revenue Service, Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI), and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) began investigating Frosties in January, shortly after receiving complaints about the scam. Frosties was a buzzy project whose 8,888 NFTs — priced at the...

Continue reading…