Shaq Served in FTX Lawsuit After Three-Month Saga

NBA legend Shaquille O’Neal has been served in a class-action lawsuit tied to FTX’s collapse.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs in the case — which accuses O’Neal and several other celebrities of promoting a fraudulent company in FTX — said on Twitter Sunday (April 16) that they had presented the basketball player with papers.

UPDATE: Plaintiffs in the billion $ FTX class action case just served @SHAQ outside his house. His home video cameras recorded our service and we made it very clear that he is not to destroy or erase any of these security tapes, because they must be preserved for our lawsuit.

— The Moskowitz Law Firm (@moskowitzesq) April 17, 2023

“Plaintiffs in the billion $ FTX class action case just served @SHAQ outside his house,” The Moskowitz Law Firm tweeted. “His home video cameras recorded our service, and we made it very clear that he is not to destroy or erase any of these security tapes because they must be preserved for our lawsuit.”

Adam Moskowitz, co-counsel on the FTX lawsuits, told Coindesk that his firm had essentially spent three months chasing O’Neal to serve him with papers, dealing with a situation in which the celebrity pitchman was “hiding and driving away from our process servers.”

As PYMNTS wrote in November, several celebrity endorsers, including Tom Brady, Gisele Bündchen, Stephen Curry, Larry David and FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried are defendants in a class-action suit that accuses them of promoting unregistered securities.

Earlier this year, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) cautioned celebrities to be careful about endorsing cryptocurrencies.

The commission issued that warning in February after announcing that former NBA star Paul Pierce had agreed to pay a $1.4 million penalty for failing to reveal that he had been paid to endorse the cryptocurrency ethereumMax (EMAX).

“This case is yet another reminder to celebrities: The law requires you to disclose to the public from whom and how much you are getting paid to promote investment in securities, and you can’t lie to investors when you tout a security,” SEC Chair Gary Gensler said at the time.

The lawsuit including O’Neal is one island in an ocean of legal action involving FTX and Bankman-Fried, who is accused of masterminding a massive fraud that continues to rock the digital asset world.

In one of the latest wrinkles, officials who took over for Bankman-Fried following his resignation said last week they were considering restarting the exchange. It’s a move PYMNTS called into question in a recent report.

“Any reboot would entail a litany of regulatory and compliance nightmares, and it remains unclear whether the investigative work undertaken was centered around a limited effort meant to assist in processing customer withdrawals, or whether the FTX Debtors are looking to relaunch the entire FTX business,” PYMNTS wrote.

The crypto industry is at a crossroads as it finds itself locked out of the American banking sector — leaving the future home of a re-launched FTX up in the air.

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