Sports stars, celebrities sued for promotion of alleged FTX ‘ponzi scheme’

A plethora of sports stars and other celebrities have been named on a class-action lawsuit following the collapse of crypto giant FTX.

The lawsuit has been filed against FTX and its founder Sam Bankman-Fried with the likes of Tom Brady, Stephen Curry, Naomi Osaka, Trevor Lawrence, Larry David, Shohei Ohtani and Shaquille O’Neal also finding their names on it.  

The lawsuit alleges that these individuals, along with others, “either controlled, promoted, assisted in, and actively participated” in the alleged scheme where they “aggressively marketed” FTX.

The class-action lawsuit is being led by Oklahoma resident and investor Edwin Garrison, who has alleged that the cryptocurrency platform “was designed to take advantage of unsophisticated investors from across the country.”

According to the class-action, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, investors lost a collective amount of $11 billion dollars.

The filing states that FTX is “truly a house of cards, a Ponzi scheme where the FTX Entities shuffled customer funds between their opaque affiliated entities, using new investor funds obtained through investments in the YBAs and loans to pay interest to the old ones and to attempt to maintain the appearance of liquidity.” 

FTX recently filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and Bankman-Fried resigned as CEO. Crypto prices drastically decreased, leaving the platform unable to cover its customers’ accounts when there was a flurry of withdrawal requests.

YouTube finance influencers Graham Stephan, Kevin “Meet Kevin” Paffrath and Andrei Jikh have also come under fire for their promotion of FTX.