Lawrence, Paffrath, and Nash are far from the only people facing class actions over their endorsements of FTX. Tom Brady, Gisele Bundchen, Steph Curry, Shaquille O'Neal, Larry David, are also facing lawsuits over their activities in promoting the firm.
NFL quarterback Trevor Lawrence, others settle FTX class action claims
Jacksonville Jaguars quarterback Trevor Lawrence has agreed to settle claims against him made in a class action lawsuit by FTX customers who say his endorsement of the fallen crypto exchange contributed their decision to use it. Also settling are finance YouTuber and crypto shills Kevin Paffrath and Tom Nash. The terms of the settlements were not disclosed.
Logan Paul slapped with a class action lawsuit over CryptoZoo rugpull
Logan Paul is now facing a class action lawsuit over his CryptoZoo project, a planned NFT game that Paul apparently lost interest in and abandoned — after profiting handsomely, of course, off his fans who put millions into the project.
Scam sleuth CoffeeZilla dug into the project in a multipart YouTube series recently, drawing legal threats from Paul. After plenty of negative publicity, Paul withdrew the legal threats and promised to develop a refund plan for some of the funds that were invested, though it is a small fraction of the money lost in the project.
Rather than wait to see if Paul comes through with refunding only a small portion of their money, a group has formed a class action lawsuit against Paul and others who helped with the project. The lead plaintiff put a total of around $3,000 into the project altogether.
The suit accuses Paul and his team of a whole host of charges including fraud, breach of contract, unjust enrichment, deceptive trade practices, negligence, and fraudulent misrepresentation.
Class action lawsuit against Jimmy Fallon, Paris Hilton, Justin Bieber, Gwyneth Paltrow, and others accuses them of undisclosed NFT promotions
Paris Hilton and Jimmy Fallon talk up their Bored Apes in an excruciating segment of The Tonight Show in January 2022 (attribution)A class action lawsuit against the company behind Bored Apes and its executives, those on the board of "Ape DAO", a whole host of celebrity promoters and brands, and the MoonPay service has accused the group of a scheme to employ celebrities to promote Bored Ape NFTs and ApeCoin without proper disclosures. The suit goes on to claim that MoonPay, a service known for brokering big-ticket celebrity crypto purchases, was used to obfuscate payoffs, and itself benefitted from the publicity earned from brokering these deals. The suit alleges that each of the "promoters" were compensated in some way, either through direct payments or via financial stake in MoonPay.
The promoters listed in the lawsuit are: talent manager Guy Oseary, digital artist Beeple, Madonna, Paris Hilton, Jimmy Fallon and related entities, Justin Bieber, Gwyneth Paltrow, Serena Williams, Diplo, Post Malone, Snoop Dogg, Kevin Hart, the Chainsmokers, Steph Curry, Future, The Weeknd, DJ Khaled, and Adidas.
Class action lawsuit filed against celebrities who promoted FTX
A class action lawsuit has been filed against Sam Bankman-Fried and a slew of celebrities who helped to promote FTX as a safe place to hold and trade crypto. Defendants include Tom Brady, Gisele Bündchen, Steph
Curry, Shaquille O'Neal, David Ortiz, Naomi Osaka, and Larry David.
The suit alleges that the celebrities violated the anti-touting provisions of securities laws by failing to disclose the nature, scope, and amount they were compensated to promote the platform.
Lawyer Kyle Roche withdraws from several crypto class-action lawsuits after allegations that he was involved in "gangster-style" schemes to hurt competitor projects
Kyle Roche, a founding partner and namesake of the Roche Freedman law firm, has withdrawn from class-action lawsuits filed by the company against projects including Tether and Bitfinex, the Tron Foundation, and BitMEX. This change came less than a week after a whistleblower website alleged he had been paid to attack competitors of the Avalanche blockchain with lawsuits intended to harm them and reveal corporate secrets.
Although Roche has denied the claims by the site, and stated that someone deliberately got him drunk and then took clips of videos out of context, it probably doesn't look so good for a lawyer to be referring to jurors as "10 idiots", or plaintiffs in class-action lawsuits as "100,000 idiots".
Whistleblower website alleges that the creators of the Avalanche blockchain paid lawyers to attack competitors
An anonymous whistleblower website called "CryptoLeaks" has alleged that Ava Labs, the company behind the Avalanche blockchain, paid lawyers to sue competitors and obtain confidential information through legal discovery. The site includes secretly recorded videos of Kyle Roche, a founding partner of the Roche Freedman law firm which has filed class action lawsuits against numerous companies including Solana, Binance, and others. In some of the surreptitiously recorded videos, Roche is visibly drunk.
"A pact was formed that involved Ava Labs granting Roche Freedman a massive quantity of Ava Labs stock and Avalanche cryptocurrency (AVAX), now worth hundreds of millions of dollars, in exchange for Roche Freedman agreeing to pursue a hidden purpose," the site claims.
The site does include video clips of Roche saying some surprising things, although the clips are very short and devoid of context. The whole thing should be taken with a grain of salt.
Ava Labs founder Emin Gün Sirer dismissed the claims on the site as "conspiracy theory nonsense". Roche published a statement about the " numerous unsourced false statements and illegally obtained, highly edited video clips that are not presented with accurate context", in which he said that his statements about filing class action suits at the behest of Ava Labs were "false, and were obtained through deceptive means, including a deliberate scheme to intoxicate, and then exploit me, using leading questions. The statements are highly edited and spliced out of context."
Terra investors file class action lawsuit against Binance.US
A group of people who put money into Terra (UST), the stablecoin that collapsed in May, have filed a class action lawsuit against Binance.US. Binance.US is a crypto exchange that operates within the US, managed independently from Binance, which is not available to US customers due to fears that it would run afoul of US securities regulations.
The lawsuit argues that UST is an unregistered security, and that as a result, Binance.US was violating securities laws by listing it. The lawsuit also alleges that Binance.US misled investors, leading them to believe that UST was more stable than it actually was. More than 2,000 investors have joined the lawsuit.
Class action lawsuit filed against HUMBL blockchain platform
A litigation firm filed a class action lawsuit against HUMBL, a financial services company that touts its web3 and defi products. The lawsuit alleges that HUMBL and its executives made false and misleading statements about the company and its prospects, made "selectively timed announcements to keep Humbl stock price high so that Company insiders could sell off their holdings into artificially created volume", and sold its BLOCK ETX assets in violation of securities laws.
HUMBL stock has dropped from a high of $6.84 per share to a low of $0.11. Similarly the BLOCK ETX asset has dropped more than 87% from its high.
- HUMBL lawsuit website
Users threaten to sue after yield generation project Stablegains loses $44 million in Terra collapse
A class action law firm sent a letter to the yield generation project Stablegains, demanding records on customer accounts, marketing and advertising strategies, and communications relating to the Terra stablecoin. Stablegains described itself as aiming to "make it simple and safe for everyone to benefit from advances in financial technology", and promised that "regardless if crypto markets are soaring or crashing, the value of assets under our management remains stable".
Unfortunately for their customers, it turned out that Stablegains was heavily invested in the Terra project's Anchor protocol, which collapsed along with the rest of the Terra ecosystem last week. Stablegains' website had stated they primarily generated yields through the asset-backed stablecoin USDC. However, after the collapse of Terra, Stablegains admitted that "All users' holdings are in UST" — which lost over 90% of its value.
Class action lawsuits filed against Terra founders after crypto collapse
Following the collapse of the Terra ecosystem and its tokens TerraUSD and Luna, affected Korean investors have filed both criminal and civil lawsuits against the project's creator, Do Kwon. Represented by RKB & Partners, the lawsuit seeks to seize Kwon's assets and pursue fraud charges.
Another Korean group, calling themselves "Victims of Luna, UST coins", has amassed 1,500 members and reportedly plans to file a lawsuit against Kwon and Terraform Labs' other cofounder, Shin Hyun-Seong (who is also known as Daniel Shin, and is no longer with Terraform Labs).
This development may be particularly inconvenient for Kwon and Shin, given Terra's legal team quit the company the previous day.
On June 17, another investor filed a separate lawsuit against Terraform Labs, Kwon, and various others in a US court.