Odaily News The U.S. Department of Justice said Thursday that three British individuals have been charged with orchestrating a $3 million scam related to the NFT series Evolved Apes. Mohamed-Amin Atcha, Mohamed Rilaz Waleedh and Daood Hassan were charged with wire fraud and money laundering in their scheme. The Justice Department said the charges stem from a 2021 scheme to get NFT collectors to buy 10,000 Ethereum-based NFTs, called Evolved Apes, which were expected to be usable in an online battle game. The defendants reportedly received a total of 798 ETH, worth about $2.7 million at the time. "As alleged, the defendants drove up the price of digital artworks by falsely promising to develop a video game, but they took investors' funds, never developed the game, and kept the proceeds for themselves," said Damian Williams, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, in a statement.