The Story of the ‘Women-Led’ Fame Lady Squad Scandal Which Sold $1.5 Million Worth of Art

The Fame Lady Squad Scandal has been uncovered! The  ‘women lead’ NFT project on the ETH blockchain turned out to be a lie, after the NFT community found out it was run by Russian men. This revelation came only after $1.5 million worth of art has been sold, despite their claims to be 3 women from Norway & the USA. 

The Positive Beginning of Fame Lady Squad

The project gained attention within the NFT community last month, as they seemed to bring something different to the table. They were promoting female empowerment and equality in an industry that has been largely dominated by men since the start. This unique selling point enticed people to buy one of 8,888 avatars that represented different and diverse women. Although it showed similarities to World of Women, which was endorsed by Garyvee, their project still gained traction.

In total, 1.9k ETH of Fame Lady Squad avatars have been traded on OpenSea. Twitter handle, @BennyBeaks2020,  spoke on the community aspect of the project, saying: “The FLS community was truly amazing, and really drove most of the project’s success anyway. Met so many smart, nice and caring folks in that discord.”

Twitter Exposé 

 Fame Lady Squad were identitfied as Russian and all male by the Twitter user and NFT enthusiast, @FedorLinnik. Impressively, he uncovered the whole story- going into great depths via a Twitter thread. 

The NFT community was disappointed, angered and frustrated with the project. Particularly those who’d invested a significant amount of money. One user (@Halcyomnikin) said, “People like this are going to completely f*** up crypto for the rest of us”. @Shirley_NFT added “It’s a shame that “actual” female artists like myself are not getting enough traction on their projects while imposters are selling out in minutes.” The frustration was shared throughout the NFT Twitter space. Users were also confused to what was going on and  denial at what was truly happening. Hoping what had been released wasn’t true. 

Fame Lady Squad’s Apology

The developer, whose real name is Max Rand, said “Sorry for the lie”. Which came as a part of an apology he released on Twitter. He now claims to provide monetary support to early-stage projects and artists in the NFT industry.

The project’s Twitter account has now been deleted. Despite this, the project is still selling consistently on the secondary marketplace, OpenSea where the floor price is 0.072 at the time of writing. Over 3,100 people still own a Fame Lady Squad avatar.

The Aftermath of the Scandal

Fortunately, there may be a silver lining to the NFT industry’s dark cloud. Fame Lady Squad announced they would pass the project on to a women-led DAO called the Phoenix Project. Sales shot up sharply since this announcement, as the new female leaders already have their own following.

Unfortunately, FLS is not the only scandolous collectible. Cyber Girls City Club also admitted their project was misleading.  Despite their claims the project was created by 2 Asian women, it was actually “created by a team of 6 people. Only 2 of them were women”. 

The Fame Lady Squad scandal and others can teach new the community a valuable lesson: Do as much research as possible into both the project and the people behind it.