Cole Willmen, co-founder of Pudgy Penguins, who was removed from the project by $NFT holders in 2022 over allegations of misappropriating funds, has sold off a collection of 44,444 $NFT on the Robinhood Chain platform.
According to on-chain observer @0xmani, the collection sold for over 684 $ETH (approximately $1.28 million).
Is Cole Willmen Running an $NFT Scam?
Cole Willmen, posting under the handle ColeThereum on X, announced that his collection of 44,444 $NFT called Spritehood Wisps was sold out, accompanying the news with a two-line message: "Sold out. I'm back in the $NFT game."
Some traders, such as @CryptoGorilla, noted that the cryptocurrency launch was advertised as "free" but turned out to be a "stealth launch" requiring payment to participate. Others, like user HanIsRich, called the project a "cash-grab", arguing that promised further development would not require nearly 20% of the funds raised.
The Gorilla company refrained from directly accusing fraud, noting that the floor price had increased 2.6x and rare assets sold for as much as 0.88 $ETH.
The collection is listed under the author name Spritehoodio and is trading on OpenSea with a floor price of $35.21 at the time of publication.
OpenSea data shows 4,074 unique owners hold the 44,444 tokens, meaning one owner controls roughly 9 out of every 10 tokens on average. Only 5.2% of the total supply is listed for sale, and the 24-hour trading volume was $781,000, with the highest token offer at $32.42.
Willmen conducted the drop on the Robinhood Chain platform, not on Ethereum. The brokerage launched this network on July 1, 2026, as a venue for tokenized stocks and U.S. Treasury bonds, but it has instead been overrun by meme coins.
In its first few weeks, Robinhood Chain saw instances of wallet draining, phishing pages, and scam schemes proliferating across the platform.
What Was the Pudgy Penguins Co-Founder Accused Of?
In August 2021, blockchain investigator ZachXBT published a piece about Willmen's pre-crypto dropshipping site, eBoy Outlet, describing its reviews as full of messages from customers who never received orders, refunds, or responses to support requests. Willmen denied any wrongdoing and stated he refunded buyers who didn't receive items.
Previously, Willmen also released an $NFT collection called My Fucking Pickle. Its floor price now stands at $13, down 98% from its June 2021 peak of over $540.
"Projects made for purely cash are something," wrote ZachXBT at the time.
Reacting to the new drop, one developer wrote on X that Cole is "the same guy who was behind the early memes and cash-grabs," and that "half of crypto Twitter is acting like none of that happened."
The Pudgy Penguins project, co-founded by Willmen, launched in July 2021 as a set of 8,888 cartoon penguin avatars on Ethereum, with an initial mint price of 0.03 $ETH, and total trading volume on OpenSea reaching $145 million.
On January 5, 2022, an investor alleged that the founders had drained the collection's treasury of $ETH. The next day, holders voted to oust the founders via a Discord poll, and Willmen stepped back on X, citing "mental health issues."
By April 2022, the remaining team sold Pudgy Penguins to a group led by Los Angeles entrepreneur Luca Netz for 750 $ETH, worth about $2.5 million at the time. Netz later transformed the brand into a physical toy brand that sold over a million units through Walmart, Target, and Walgreens.
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