It’s been a year since we first covered the story of Squiggles, the fully manifesto-tracked rugpull NFT. The NFT market has seen many come and go since this time, but the Squiggles story has at least one more chapter.
Reports have emerged on Thursday that a US Federal Grand Jury is investigating the project’s founders, including examining the manifesto documents and social media posts.
Let’s dive into the latest in the ‘Squiggles Saga.’
Squandering The Squiggles
Not to be confused with the more popular (and of course, more established and legitimate NFT project) Chromie Squiggles, which is under the umbrella of Art Blocks, this Squiggles NFT project seeks the aesthetics seen in projects like Doodles – leaning towards cartoons, visually wavy.
The manifesto, titled ‘Squiggles Rug Alert,’ has probably garnered more attention than the project did last year, and runs to nearly 60 pages. It was released in the hours leading up to the mint, and caused quite a stir in the NFT community; at that time, many of the biggest crypto sleuths and critics, including the likes of Coffeezilla, ZachXBT, NFTEthics, and others released threads and details around the carpet. OpenSea quickly pulled the project from the platform as the turmoil escalated.
A year later, it is widely believed that this rugpull committee has finally packed its bags and moved on from the NFT board. While the Squiggles project continues to be active on Twitter, the comments and dialogue with the account generally reinforces the widespread belief that this project is a complete carpet. However, the story may not be over yet.
Ethereum-based NFTs have been the breadwinners in the space, but therefore, also the biggest sandbox for scammers and fraudsters to play in, too. | Source: ETH-USD on TradingView.com
Federal Investigation: What We Know
The project’s three founders, Gavin Mayo, Gabriel Hay, and Ali Saghi were cited in a Grand Jury document that circulated online Thursday. Federal investigators are specifically looking for violations of Sections 1343 and 1957 of Title 18 of the US code, which relate to wire fraud and money laundering.
Interestingly, the news appears to have been first broken by the popular independent crypto platform DB News in a since-deleted tweet. Bitcoinist can’t find the origin of the Grand Jury document that has been circulating online.
While the full veracity of the report cannot be fully verified, the report should not surprise anyone; US investigative US investigators have been cracked in the recent months on the famous NFT and DeFi carpet.