On May 17, the actor tweeted that his NFTs, including a Bored Ape, two Mutant Apes, and a Doodle, were all stolen. “Frens, it happened to me. I was phished and had 4NFTs stolen,” said the actor. The real identity of the abductor remains unknown, but he is an NFT collector going by “Mr Cheese”. Worth noting: On May 25, Green tweeted that he had established contact with Mr. Cheese after numerous appeals from the actor to return the ape.

 

#8398 Bored Ape is still tagged with a “suspicious activity” label on OpenSea. The NFT can’t be purchased or sold on the marketplace, however it can be traded on other services like NFT Trader. Green’s failure to protect his NFT properties from being stolen was a major event for him, who had been developing an animated series called “White House Tavern” with characters from his NFT collection – most notably Bored Ape #8398.

 

Seth told Gary Vee at an NFT conference that he “bought that ape in July 2021, and spent the last several months developing and exploiting the IP to make the NFT into the star of the show”. How did they settle the dispute? Keep reading to find out!

 

The issue of Seth Green’s NFT legal ownership

 

The implications of this heated up an ongoing debate about intellectual property and the Seth Green NFT, as the Bored Ape Yacht Club’s licenses should confer commercial usage rights to anyone who purchases one. So if Green or Cheese both bought it legally, then shouldn’t they both be entitled to it? The blockchain can’t lie, right?

 

Mr. Cheese, the new NFT owner as confirmed by BuzzFeed News, said he thought it was bought ethically and had no idea it was gotten through illicit means.

 

How did they solve the case?

 

Finally, after weeks of worrying and wondering, the Seth Green NFT theft was solved and the “kidnapped” Bored Ape has been returned to its rightful owner. The Bored Ape was transferred from Cheese’s NFT wallet to a wallet linked with Green, according to blockchain transaction records, which document the purchase and trade of digital assets like NFTs.

 

When Seth was asked about the ape’s whereabouts, in a Twitter thread for his NFT company, he confirmed to BuzzFeed News that it “is home.” According to records on the crypto escrow platform NFT Trader, it appears that Cheese sent the ape over to the “Fred Simian” account through an exchange. The ape is currently residing in that wallet, which is linked to Seth Green. The actor previously claimed that he named the ape Fred Simian, and there appears to be a Twitter account for the character.

 

An unnamed wallet presumably belonging to Green (used to purchase NFTs from his public vault) sent 165 Ether, or around $297,000 worth of Bitcoin and Ethereum, to an address, in exchange for the NFT. The ETH appeared in a wallet owned by DarkWing84, an alias of Mr. Cheese, minutes later. The blockchain’s transaction history suggests that Seth Green may have bought the ape back for about $100,000 more than what Cheese originally paid for it. This happened despite Green’s previous threat to sue Mr. Cheese if he did not return the ape to him.