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Professional athletes Michael Carter-Williams, Jerami Grant, Gary Harris, Marcus Zegarowski, Terrence Ross, Dennis Smith Jr., and Lance McCullers Jr. got involved in a huge NFT rug pull.
The news about the rug pull surfaced in a series of tweets by an account under the name “ZachXBT”. The first twee said that the athletes got involved in a $1.4 million NFT rug pull via Players Only, an NFT launchpad.
The second tweet said that Players Only was launched back in early December 2021 via Doge Pound launchpad. It also stated that the launchpad advertised itself as “NFTs for sports fans from the players” with utility, such as metaverse/IRL events, merch, autographs, and giveaways — all of which each athlete founder would be closely involved.
As mentioned in the third tweet, the supply was set to 10,000 and was decreased to 4,456 NFTs but still brought in $1.4m. The tweet also mentioned that the team went as far as saying that every holder will get to win something.
Each of the athletes tweeted multiple times to hype up the project upon launch. According to the fifth tweet, which says, “Right after minting concludes, the funds get transferred away to each of the athletes, Doge Pound, and the other team members Brooks/Drew.”
ZachXBT further narrated what had happened:
The first few weeks go okay then in February things begin to go poorly. People don’t receive giveaways, athletes are never hanging out or in the Discord, mods quit, excuses pile up and delays begin to happen. Quite the contrary to all the utility promised.
The author also mentioned that there were people who claim to did not get anything from what was promised to them.
7/ Here are some complaints of people not receiving anything.
— ZachXBT (@zachxbt) June 8, 2022
There were few people that actually received anything which is evidenced by the amount of complaints in general chat. pic.twitter.com/hL2mve8pRY
The same concept went on for the next two tweets, yet the last tweet said, “It’s clear the athletes haven’t put anywhere near $1.4m into the project. So many holders haven’t received items/events from giveaways they had won while athletes profited 5-6 figs each. It’s sad to see athletes from @NBA @MLB screw over fans like that w/o being reimbursed.”