Actor Seth Green, known for series such as Family Guy and Buffy, had lost his Bored Ape Yacht Club non-fungible token (NFT) last month through a phishing attack.
Well frens it happened to me. Got phished and had stolen 4NFT. @BoredApeYC @opensea @doodles @yugalabs please don’t buy or trade these while I work to resolve:@DarkWing84 looks like you bought my stolen ape- hit me up so we can fix it pic.twitter.com/VL1OVnd44m
— Seth Green (@SethGreen) May 17, 2022
In total, four NFTs were stolen from the actor with a combined value of more than $300,000. Among them was Bored Ape NFT #8398, which he not only paid $200,000 for, but was also slated to star in a new series from Green called White Horse Tavern.
NFTs back to their rightful owner
BuzzFeed News report reports that Green has bought his NFTs. The actor has paid 165 Ethereum (ETH) (about $255,000 at the time of writing) for the NFT.
Last Thursday, the actor organized a Twitter Space chat in which he indicated that the NFT is back in his possession. From the transactions of the NFT we can see that the money from Green’s wallet went to an NFT collector called “Mr. Cheese” and “DarkWing84” by the crypto escrow platform NFT Trader.
OpenSea, an NFT marketplace, had placed a warning with the NFT as the NFT may have been suspicious. If OpenSea does this, the NFT can no longer be bought or sold. Green therefore had to contact NFT Trader to execute the trade with DarkWing84.
The collector thought he had bought the NFT fairly. Green had already threatened to sue DarkWing84 before speaking to him.
The theft sparked a new discussion
While it’s not entirely clear, besides the money, why DarkWing84 was willing to reunite the NFT with its original owner, this scenario has sparked a new discussion about intellectual property (IP) and copyrights, as the NFT thief wouldn’t get the rights to the White Horse Tavern series because the NFT was stolen.