Creators of Frosties NFT collection accused of fraud for $1,1 million

The defendants planned to launch another scam project after the withdrawal of funds

26.03.2022 - 08:45

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What’s new? The creators of the NFT collection Frosties, Ethan Vinh Nguyen and Marcus Llacuna, were accused of fraud and conspiracy to launder money. On January 9, the two men deactivated the Frosties website and withdrew about $1,1 million in cryptocurrency that belonged to investors. According to a statement from the US Attorney’s Office, the defendants planned to launch a new potential scam project, Embers, on March 26.

Press release of the US Attorney’s Office

Details of the case. Nguyen and Llacuna immediately “abandoned” the project after selling all 8 888 collectible tokens, with an average price for each NFT was averaging around $130. The project’s roadmap included a $50 000 charity, a community-controlled wallet, and metaverse features. While the Red Cross did receive the promised donation, other items were not implemented by the project team.

Before withdrawing the funds, Nguyen wrote a letter of apology to the moderator of their Discord server and sent him ETH “for the problems caused.” The attackers concealed their identities so they would not be identified. The law enforcers matched the IP addresses in Discord and on the Coinbase exchange and were able to identify the credit cards used by the defendants. The two men now face up to 20 years in prison.

Earlier, the organizers of a crypto Ponzi scheme were detained in Russia, the attackers managed to raise more than 1 billion Russian rubles.

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