Mutant Ape Planet developer Aurélien Michel, a counterfeit of the popular NFT - Mutant Ape Yacht Club (MAYC) collection, the court ordered the investor to return $1,4 million and pay a fine of $15. In addition, U.S. District Judge Margot Brody sentenced the defendant, who is a French citizen, to a month in prison, which he has already served pending sentencing.
The punishment Aurélien Michel received did not correspond to what prosecutors had demanded. Citing the scale of the losses suffered by investors, the authorities wanted to jail the developer for 37 months. The defendant's lawyers, on the contrary, argued that their client was innocent because the buyers NFT received "their digital works of art."
Because of this, the judge concluded that the amount of damages from the fraudulent actions was unclear. According to Brody, anyone who purchased NFT , received something valuable.
The Mutant Ape Planet collection consisted of 6797 NFT , issued on the blockchain Ethereum The non-fungible tokens were sold for 567 Ether, but the asset price fell sharply shortly thereafter.
Real estate sales NFT -Mutant Ape Planet collections
In January 2023, Michel was arrested in New York on suspicion of fraud amounting to $2,9 million. In November of that year, the developer pleaded guilty.
