YouTuber Logan Paul Says Some of His Game Developers Were ‘Con Men’

After keeping his mouth shut for about two weeks, Logan Paul has finally opened up about his blockchain NFT game, CryptoZoo, in a response video to investigative YouTuber Stephen “Coffeezilla” Findeisen. But if you were hoping for some sort of explanation of what went wrong with the project, you’ll be sorely disappointed. Instead, Paul spends his time trying to discredit Coffeezilla’s sources and reporting, while admitting that yes, many people on the project were “bad actors” and saying his only mistake was trusting them. I take that back: He’s not on his redemption arc.

Let me catch you up real quick. coffeezilla, a YouTuber known for investigating fraudsters and scammers in the crypto space, spent a year looking at Logan Paul and his “really fun game that makes you money,” CryptoZoo. This “game” was set up to generate passive income for players. You buy the game’s currency, zoo coins, to spend on egg NFTs that hatch into animals. You can breed these animals to create hybrids, with rarer ones yielding more Zoo Coins which can then be cashed out for IRL money. It sounded tempting in theory, but was an apparent blanket move in practice, as members of Paul’s team (but not Paul himself) sold their coins early to make millions while Paul’s avid fans and early investors lost hundreds of thousands of dollars, according to Coffeezilla’s reporting. Based on his three-part series, CryptoZoo appeared to be a scam.

Read more: YouTuber: Logan Paul’s NFT ‘Game’ Is A Big Crypto Scam

Logan Paul chose to remain silent during much of Coffeezilla’s reporting and posting, but no longer! On January 3, Paul uploaded his response to Coffeezilla’s investigation on YouTube, saying he would “defend himself with the facts” while hurling insults such as saying Coffeezilla continues to “morph from an investigator into a gossip channel” and calling him The “Keemstar” of crypto in finance.” Ugh, that stings.

Anyway, in his response video, Paul focuses on what he calls three “discrepancies” in Coffeezilla’s reports. The first point was about the CryptoZoo developer fleeing to Switzerland with the game’s source code and holding it hostage for $1 million. Paul pulls Coffeezilla for keeping the person anonymous and calling him “Z” in his reports. It turns out this developer’s name is Zach Kelling, and according to Paul, he has “multiple felonies” related to armed robbery and obstructing the legal process.

In his video, Paul displays papers purporting to be official documents from the Johnson County Court in Kansas that refer to Kelling’s alleged criminal charges. (Kotaku could not independently verify these facts, and the Johnson County District Court Records Office representative said that “there were no public records” for Zach Kelling.) Paul brings this up to cast doubt on Kelling’s character and to insinuate that those things Kelling said in Coffeezilla’s videos – that he had 30 engineers working under him and burning $50,000 a week on the CryptoZoo project – is completely wrong. According to Paul, he only had three engineers, not 30.

Paul then admits that yes, he certainly worked with this “unsavory person”, but frames the fault as being too trusting, saying “I guess that’s what I get for trusting the team that I trusted to vet and manage” the hiring process. He describes former CryptoZoo lead developer Eddie Ibanez as a “swindler who conned billionaires, the Mormon Church, the owner of the New York Yankees, and now me.”

He then casts suspicion on yet another of Coffeezilla’s sources, a man named Emilio whom Coffeezilla interviewed for his reports. Paul suggests that Coffeezilla should have been aware that Emilio was an unreliable person who had previously been involved in two carpet pulls, and thus a poor source for his reporting. Paul also takes a moment to challenge Coffeezilla’s claim that eggs in CryptoZoo cannot be hatched, saying that “one second of research” would have proved otherwise and shows footage of the game’s eggs “hatching” to reveal images of elephants, ducks and other animals.

Finally, Paul taps into a recorded phone conversation Coffeezilla had with Paul’s manager, Jeffrey Levin, which was then used in Coffeezilla’s reports, supposedly without Levin’s permission. In accordance California laws under invasion of privacyIt is illegal to record a conversation without the consent of all parties because it is a state of consent with two parties. This is the sticking point in Paul’s legal threat if they end up in court.

“Even though you didn’t confirm any background, corroborate evidence, took the word of several criminals as truth and broke laws, you still published the defamation,” says Paul, before claiming that several “bad actors” have been removed from the project. and that he and his manager Jeff “made no money and will never make money from CryptoZoo. In fact, we were just losing money trying to pick up the pieces.”

Logan Paul ends his video by assuring viewers that CryptoZoo is still coming, contradicting Coffeezilla’s claims that it is not actually being made. He also threatens Coffeezilla with legal action for the “defamation”, saying he will need a good lawyer. However, Paul remains open to Coffeezilla appearing on his podcast, Impulsive.

Kotaku contacted Paul for comment.

In a brief email exchange with KotakuCoffeezilla repeated what he said on Twitter about Paul’s answer. He said a full answer will come “when I organize my thoughts” while type of trade with Paul online over the details of the year-long investigation.

“The fact that Logan is suing me instead of the criminals and con artists he hired says it all,” Coffeezilla said. “He took zero responsibility. Zero excuses. He just wants to save his own reputation.”

As for Zach Kelling, Coffeezilla said he just learned about Kelling’s supposed past legal battles.

“These ‘legal battles’ were from the early 2000s (I think? 2001?),” he said. “If Logan’s character standard is to dig years back to judge people by their lowest moments, I don’t think that’s a fight he’ll win. Either way, I have no interest in whether Zach Kelling is good or bad. I didn’t hire him. My job as a journalist is to reach out to all parties. Logan had accused Zach of stealing his code. I reached out to Zach and got his story, and then got back to Logan and his manager in response. Logan and his manager chose not to comment and then get upset when I quote the guy the staff.”

As for what Paul’s answer is like is received, someone online is make fun of his tactics to point out that he, whether intentionally or not hired swindlers and swindlers to work at CryptoZoo. In a reaction video, Twitch streamer Hasan Piker pauses in the middle of Paul’s claims saying, “Not a single person believes that any of the people involved in this situation are good people. You hired them, you fucking idiot!” Piker goes on to call Paul’s claims in the video “composition of Ls.” Yes, that’s definitely one way to look at it.