PEPE team insiders including developer Zachary Testa gained control of the multisig by reducing its signature requirement from five-of-eight to two-of-eight, then transferred ~16 trillion PEPE tokens (~$16.9M gross, ~$15M net after slippage) to CEXs. Insiders subsequently deleted themselves as signers and removed social media accounts.

PEPE said on Twitter that 16 trillion pieces of PEPE were sold yesterday because three former members deleted the multi-signature permissions after stealing tokens. However, Jeremy Cahen, founder of the NFT market Not Larva Labs, issued a post saying that the "truth" announced by PEPE was a complete lie, and said that he and the community were used by the PEPE team. On August 26, PEPE tweeted that PEPE's Telegram group is currently locked, the group owner's old Telegram account was hacked, and the group has been taken over by hackers.