'Evolved Apes' NFT Creator Evil Ape Disappears After Raising $2.7 Million-worth Of Ape JPEGs For Fighting Game

In a story that may come as an absolute shock to some of you, an NFT creator has scammed their buyers.

The NFT community has been rocked by a scandal involving a creator named Evil Ape, who earned 798 ETH, or roughly $2.7 million, for a collection of Ape JPEG NFTs. The idea is that the apes would eventually be contestants in a supposed fighting video game called Evolved Apes in which the "apes" would fight in battles for cryptocurrency. One week after the project launched, its Twitter account, website and Evil Ape all vanished, leaving behind a wash of buyers with Ape NFT jpegs and no fighting game.

On Tuesday, Vice first reported on the scam, reporting that an investor in the project known as Mike_Cryptobull told the Evolved Apes community that, in his estimation, "Evil Ape has washed his hands of the project taking away the wallet with all the ETH from minting that was to be used for everything, from paying the artist, paying out cash giveaways, paying for marketing, paying for rarity tools, developing the game and everything else in between."

While this undoubtedly looks like a scam, the aggrieved buyers may have no legal recourse.

"The thing is that everyone did get what they paid for, an NFT," said the community of buyers, now known as "Fight Back Apes," in an email sent to PC Gamer. "At the end of the day any promises of a game or other development fall out of the scope of your purchase."

Fight Back Apes reportedly plans to pick up where Evil Ape left off and relaunch the project on their own. Mike_Cryptobull wrote, "We will become the Fight Back Apes, fighting as a community against our nemesis Evil Ape," looking to score funding from a variety of sources to make this NFT ape crypto fighting game happen. The group will diversify the funds to prevent a repeat of the Evil Ape fiasco.

Of course, for those who aren't fans of NFTs in general, the idea of a bunch of crypto buyers shelling out thousands of dollars for arguably hideous drawings of apes only to to get scammed was pretty funny.

It's amazing pic.twitter.com/JdfH1QsxF7

— nick (@JucheMane) October 5, 2021

NFT scam marks: “there were multiple red flags” in Evolved Apes early on, “but 99% of us were just blinded by the art"

The art: pic.twitter.com/l0u2kR22Yh

— mattthr (@mattthr) October 5, 2021

I have a solution for people burned by the Evolved Apes NFT:

Just send me your fucking money. I will make no promises, I will give you nothing. However, you will receive the knowledge that I have been honest with you about that, and isn’t that priceless if you think about it?

— Col. Boozy Badger (@BoozyBadger) October 6, 2021

It goes to show that the NFT community is still a bit of a wild west when it comes to protections for buyers and sellers, and it continues to struggle to gain legitimacy in the eyes of doubters online.