As Le Télégramme revealed on Saturday, American judge arrested on Thursday in a New York airport Aurélien Michel, former footballer of En Avant Guingamp and son of Coco Michel, famous player of the Breton club. The 24-year-old Frenchman is suspected of defrauding buyers of NFT, those digital reproductions that are shaking up the art market.
According to the US Department of Justice, Aurélien Michel sold NFTs – theoretically unadulterated digital certificates of authenticity – and promised his customers “many benefits and rewards”. “Once all the NFTs were sold, he allegedly stopped all communications and withdrew the buyers’ money from the company’s cryptocurrency wallets, lining his pockets with nearly $3 million in investor-owned money,” he said. The Ministry in a statement.
Presented to a judge
The young man was about to travel to the United Arab Emirates, where he resides, when he was intercepted by American authorities at JFK airport in New York and had to be brought before a judge.
Aurélien Michel admitted to embezzling funds during an exchange with buyers on social networks transcribed in the press release of the US Department of Justice, but denied responsibility for her actions on the community of NFT buyers, assuring that she had “become too toxic.”