Baller Ape Club: a $2.6 million rug pull, and a defendant the US has not caught
Le Anh Tuan, a 26-year-old Vietnamese national, and unnamed co-conspirators sold "Baller Ape Club" NFTs in October 2021, then deleted the project's website and disappeared with investors' money within a day of the public sale — at the time, the Justice Department called it the largest NFT scam it had charged to date. Tuan was indicted in the Central District of California on wire fraud and money laundering conspiracy charges in mid-2022. No source reviewed for this page reports his arrest.
- Year
- 2022
- Where
- United States, Vietnam
- Outcome
- Charged — an allegation, not a conviction
- Reported loss
- $2.6 million
- Victims
- Not stated in the sources
- Schemes
- NFT and crypto token rug pulls
- Last reviewed
- 2026-09-16
The facts, as recorded
- Le Anh Tuan, 26, a Vietnamese national, was charged with one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit international money laundering.
- Baller Ape Club NFTs — cartoon ape figures — went on public sale in October 2021; shortly after the first day of sales, Tuan and his co-conspirators executed a "rug pull," ending the project, deleting its website, and keeping investors' money.
- Tuan and his co-conspirators obtained approximately $2.6 million from investors.
- Proceeds were laundered through "chain-hopping" — converting funds across multiple cryptocurrency blockchains using decentralized swap services — to obscure the transaction trail, according to blockchain analysis.
- At the time of the indictment, the Justice Department described this as the largest NFT scheme it had criminally charged to date.
- Tuan faces up to 40 years in prison if convicted on both counts.
- HSI Executive Associate Director Steve Francis said the investigation "exemplifies the importance of public-private partnerships" in combating cryptocurrency fraud.
Why this case matters
Every other rug pull case on this site’s pages involves a US-based defendant who was arrested and moved through the US court system. This one shows the other outcome: an operator outside US jurisdiction who, based on the sources available for this page, has not been apprehended — the most common real-world ending for an international rug pull, even when investigators can name a suspect.
A rug pull on the first day
Baller Ape Club did not run for weeks or months before collapsing. According to the indictment, investigators, and this case’s own sources, the project ended within roughly a day of its public NFT sale — the website deleted and the money gone before most buyers had time to notice anything was wrong.
Chain-hopping as the specific laundering method
Investigators describe converting the stolen funds across multiple blockchains through decentralized swap services — the same category of technique, chain-hopping, documented in this scheme’s other laundered cases, used here to obscure roughly $2.6 million in proceeds before they could be traced to a cash-out point.
The caveat
Tuan is charged, not convicted, and is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty in court. None of the sources reviewed for this page report an arrest, extradition or any further proceedings since the 2022 indictment — the case’s public status, as far as this page’s sources show, remains an outstanding charge against a defendant believed to be outside the United States.
Sources
- HSI Baltimore-led investigation results in breakup of largest known NFT scheme to date. US Immigration and Customs Enforcement / Homeland Security Investigations. Accessed 2026-09-16. Supports: Defendant name, age, nationality, the charges and maximum sentence, the $2.6 million figure, the October 2021 rug pull timeline, the chain-hopping laundering method, the "largest known NFT scheme" characterization, and the Steve Francis quote.