Pepe founder blames ‘nefarious ex-team members’ for unexpected $16M withdrawal

On Aug. 24, 16 trillion Pepe tokens (PEPE), worth around $15.7 million at the time, were unexpectedly withdrawn from the project’s multi-signature centralized exchange wallet. An anonymous founder of the meme coin pointed the finger at three former team members as the culprits behind the transfers in a post on Aug. 25.

The transfer, in which around 60% of the PEPE tokens in the multi-sig wallet were moved, sparked speculations of a rug pull. The stolen Pepe tokens were quickly transferred to and sold on exchanges including Binance, OKX, KuCoin, and Bybit. The price of PEPE fell about 15% on the transfer day as investors started panicking.