Logan Paul and the CryptoZoo fallout: from unpaid fans to a buyback program and a dismissed fraud lawsuit

Logan Paul is a well-known YouTuber, boxer, and WWE performer who is all too familiar with controversy.

He has aired videos purportedly showing unidentified flying objects (UFOs) and built the energy-drink brand Prime, which Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) once urged the FDA to look into over its caffeine content. He previously posted footage of a dead body in Japan’s “suicide forest” of Aokigahara, and he angered PETA with videos showing him shock two dead rats and perform CPR on a koi fish.

But for a stretch, the loudest criticism branded him a cryptocurrency scammer. With tens of millions of followers across YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok, Paul unveiled CryptoZoo in the fall of 2021. It was an animated NFT project with Pokémon influences marketed as “a really fun game that makes you money.” Players were told they could “breed, collect, and trade exotic animal hybrids on the blockchain” and “incubate” animals for a little over $1,100, according to Coinbase. The rarer the animal, the more in-game currency (zoo tokens) it could supposedly generate each day.

Although the first 10,000 NFTs sold quickly, a fully working game never arrived.

Investors were incensed — and many stayed that way for years.

In January 2023, Paul unveiled a recovery plan intended to pay back disappointed buyers. He promised to finish the game and to “offer a rewards program for players who are disappointed in the status of the game.”

The following month, a group of buyers filed a class-action lawsuit against Paul and CryptoZoo, claiming Paul and other members of the team had fraudulently raised millions from investors.

“Paul and others behind CryptoZoo made the business decision to forego an expensive and time-consuming process to create a functional CryptoZoo game or support it, and instead deliberately undertook a scheme to defraud Plaintiff and other consumers,” the lawsuit claimed.

Without Stephen “Coffeezilla” Findeisen’s work, the lawsuit might never have been filed. Findeisen, a self-described online-fraud investigator, spent more than a year digging into CryptoZoo and published a three-part series on YouTube in December 2022 accusing the project of letting its supporters down. He also interviewed people who said they had lost money — including an Australian investor who said he was out nearly $335,000 and asked not to be named for fear of retaliation.

Findeisen’s videos drew tens of millions of views, and in March 2023 he appeared on the “Joe Rogan Experience” to discuss his findings. At the time, he said not a single investor had been paid back. Paul, who had apologized to Findeisen in a January 2023 video after earlier threatening to sue him, said suing the YouTuber “would not benefit CryptoZoo stakeholders.”

CryptoZoo’s former head engineer, Zach Kelling, separately said Paul owed him “no less than $1 million” for his work and accused Paul of doxxing him in an attack video that the Kansas City native said led to death threats. “I deeply regret ever trying to help him or his team,” Kelling said.

Burned investors were scathing. One buyer who lost $110,000 said a refund alone was “insufficient” and that Paul “should serve some time in jail.” Another called Paul’s conduct “deplorable,” saying “the fact he just tries to hide and hope it goes away is the worst.” A third, who lost $15,000, said he wanted Paul to ask whether his family “would be proud of a serial scammer who can’t man up enough to do the right thing.”

Findeisen’s message to Paul at the time was blunt: “If you make big promises, you have to deliver. Scamming your fans is not acceptable.”

The Buyback, the Dismissal, and a Defamation Fight

The story did not stay frozen at “no one has been refunded.” On January 4, 2024, Paul announced a buyback program, ultimately setting aside roughly $2.3 million to repurchase eligible “Base Egg” and “Base Animal” CryptoZoo NFTs at 0.1 Ethereum each — close to their original 2021 mint price. The catch: claimants who took the buyback had to waive their right to sue Paul over the project. The program slowly worked through the backlog; by August 2025, reports indicated roughly 80 percent of claims had been processed and about $1.9 million paid out.

The class-action lawsuit, filed in February 2023 by Texas police officer Don Holland on behalf of about 140 buyers who lost between $100 and $350,000 each, did not survive. On October 29, 2025, U.S. District Judge Alan D. Albright in the Western District of Texas dismissed the case, adopting a magistrate judge’s finding that the plaintiffs had failed to show Paul personally profited from the venture and treating his promotional claims as marketing “puffery” rather than fraud. Paul, who learned of the recommendation around the time of his August 2025 wedding, celebrated the ruling as vindication of his long-standing insistence that he “didn’t scam anyone.”

The legal saga is not over. In June 2024, Paul filed his own defamation lawsuit against Findeisen and Coffee Break Productions in San Antonio federal court, arguing that the repeated use of the word “scam” — including in video titles, one of which topped 10 million views — falsely portrayed him as defrauding his own fans. In March 2025, a magistrate judge declined to dismiss Paul’s claims, ruling that calling him a scammer could be read as a statement of fact rather than protected opinion. The dispute was set to reach a jury trial on May 4, 2026, with Findeisen casting the suit as an attempt to punish a critic for reporting and Paul maintaining that the only way to clear his name is in a courtroom.

For another look at how the crypto world’s biggest fraud allegations play out, see our report on how China alleged the U.S. hacked $15 billion in Bitcoin from accused scam kingpin Chen Zhi.

Watch a breakdown of the CryptoZoo controversy and the Paul–Coffeezilla legal fight below: