Last night, the creative team behind a highly anticipated fan-made Persona 5 anthology zine announced that its project lead had confessed to spending $27,600 CAD (approximately $21,300 USD) of the zine’s funds for “personal use.” The money was originally intended for printing and shipping unofficial art and merchandise to customers.

In response to the alleged embezzlement, the project’s five remaining staff members removed Ree from the moderator team (which means “management team” in the zine world).

In January, Showtime tweeted that its shipping moderator had contracted coronavirus, but the comments under the tweet pointed out that customers had not received transparent communication about the zine’s shipping status for months.

After word of the alleged embezzlement emerged yesterday, Zubatzo, one of the zine’s contributing page artists, tweeted that the moderators had trusted Ree because she had previously moderated five successful zine projects.

In now-protected tweets, she claimed, based on a message that Ree had sent to other moderators, that Ree had spent the funds on Genshin Impact and takeout food.