By
Chimamanda U. Martha
April 22nd, 2024
On May 25, Green, on his Twitter page, revealed that he had made contact with Mr. Cheese, after making numerous appeals for him to return the stolen NFT.
Seth Green has recovered “Fred”, his kidnapped Bored Ape which was lost to scammers in a phishing scam weeks ago. “Fred is back home,” is what the American actor wrote on his official Twitter page, putting an end to the numerous speculations on the whereabouts of the Bored Ape Yacht NFT.
Seth Green reportedly paid almost $300,000 to an anonymous NFT collector with the moniker “Mr. Cheese” who had purchased the Bored Ape after it was stolen by scammers. On May 25, Green, on his Twitter page, revealed that he had made contact with Mr. Cheese, after making numerous appeals for him to return the stolen NFT.
Mr. Cheese, however, rebuffed any claims and appeals from Green to return the bored Ape after claiming he purchased it for around $200,000. Mr. Cheese also claimed he had no idea that the bored Ape belonged to Green and that it had been stolen.
Despite threatening to sue Mr. Cheese, Green and Mr. Cheese eventually agreed on a deal that saw his stolen NFT returned to him. Blockchain records show an unmanned wallet, belonging to Green, transferred 165 Ether, worth approximately $297,000, to an address operated by NFT Trader to exchange the ape.
The unnamed wallet had previously been used to purchase NFTs that now exist in his public vault. The Ether wallet used to receive the money reportedly belonged to DarkWing84, another alias used by Mr. Cheese.
According to blockchain transaction records documenting the buying and selling of digital assets like NFTs, the Bored Ape #8398 was transferred from Cheese’s NFT wallet to a wallet affiliated with Green. Green later confirmed in a Twitter space that the stolen bored ape was home.
The exchange appears to have occurred via a crypto escrow platform called NFT TTrader, where records show the bore ape departing from Mr. Cheese’s wallet and eventually ending up in an account named “Fred_Simian” that presently contains it. Green has previously revealed that he named the bore ape Fred Simian and that the NFT has its own Twitter account.
Bored Ape #8398, is, however, still marked with a “suspicious activity” label on OpenSea. The NFT is still frozen, thus preventing it from being bought or sold on the marketplace, but not from being transacted on other services like NFT Trader.
According to the actor, reclaiming his bored ape was more than just the money, as he had other NFTs stolen in the phishing scam. Green has been working on a new animated series dubbed “White House Tavern,” which features characters from several NFT projects. The show’s teaser was recently premiered at Gary Vaynerchuk’s NFT convention, and it featured Bored Ape #8398 as the series’ star.
A trailer for the show was recently premiered at Gary Vaynerchuk’s NFT convention, which showed Bored Ape #8398 as the star of the series. According to Yuga Labs’ licensing rules, Green would not have been permitted to use the Bored Ape’s image in his show if he had not regained his Bored Ape NFT, as the NFT holder is granted a license to the ape’s IP.