Tom Brady, Trevor Lawrence among players sued for FTX crypto collapse
After billions of dollars were poured into the ‘Deceptive FTX Platform’, who are all the players sued for FTX crypto collapse?
Sam Bankman-Fried, FTX’s founder who resigned as CEO last week, is dealing with enormous legal headaches.
On Wednesday, an FTX investor sued Bankman-Fried as well as several celebrity endorsers of his bankrupt crypto company, including Tom Brady, ex-wife Gisele Bundchen and Steph Curry. “The deceptive FTX platform maintained by the FTX entities was truly a house of cards,” the proposed lawsuit states.
Massive lawyers Adam Moskowitz and David Boies filed the suit on behalf of an FTX customer, Edwin Garrison.
The founder behind the collapsed $US32 billion cryptocurrency exchange faces criminal investigation in the Bahamas and a possible trip to the US for questioning amid the disappearance of billions of dollars in customer funds.
FTX was founded in 2019 and was one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in 2021, before filing for bankruptcy earlier this month.
Related: FTX cryptocurrency exchange files for bankruptcy: what is FTX and what happened?
Who are the celebrities/players sued for FTX ‘scheme’?
The list of celebrity endorsers includes baseball star David Ortiz, NBA star Steph Curry and basketball icon Shaquille O’Neal. The suit claims these players are accused of engaging in deceptive practices to sell FTX yield-bearing digital currency accounts.
Celebrity endorsers were also involved in a Super Bowl advertisement for FTX, as a way to utilize “some of the biggest names in sports and entertainment … pouring billions of dollars into the Deceptive FTX Platform to keep the whole scheme afloat,” the lawsuit states.
Other big names listed as defendants in the lawsuit include investor Kevin O’Leary, “Shark Tank”, Jacksonville Jaguars quarterback Trevor Lawrence, tennis player Naomi Osaka and Miami Heat star Udonis Haslem.
Brady and Bündchen, who took an undisclosed equity stake in the exchange last year, also appeared in commercials touting FTX.
FTX was “ultimately a Ponzi scheme, misleading customers and prospective customers with the false impression that any cryptocurrency assets held on the Deceptive FTX Platform were safe and were not being invested in unregistered securities,” the lawsuit states.