Source: Jerritt Clark / Getty
This is definitely one thing Soulja Boy won’t boast about being the first to do if this news turns out to be true.
Spotted on Complex, per Classaction.org, Soulja Boy, Lil Yachty, and Jake Paul are being sued for allegedly being involved in a pump and dump cryptocurrency scheme meant to fatten the pockets of SafeMoon CEO Braden John Karony and other top-level executives.
According to the lawsuit, Soulja Boy, Lil Yachty, Paul, Nick Carter, and YouTuber, Ben Phillips were used by the company to help promote SafeMoon and increase the number of investors for tokens. Their cosigns helped increase the value of the tokens, with misleading statements promising investors giving them the impression that better things were on the horizon. The suit claims this was nothing than a grade A “slow rug pull” ploy. Its been a struggle for the cryptocurrency ever since, with it failing to remain profitable.
“On Dec. 31, 2021, the price of the SafeMoon Token hit a low of $0.0000006521 per token, an over 80 percent drop from its height during the Class Period, which it has not been able to recover,” the lawsuit states. “As of the filing of this Complaint, the trading volume for the SafeMoon Token has plummeted to around only $60,000.”
It’s been shaky for SafeMoon ever since.
The toke was launched in 2021 under the alleged ruse “safely to the moon,” giving investors the impression would reach financial success minus the shady drama. While the celebrities continued to plug SafeMoon and help drive up its investor numbers, the company allegedly informed them of “token burns,” which is the process of removing a certain number of tokens from out of circulation, giving them the impression that it would increase the crypto’s value.
After nearly four trillion tokens were “burnt,” the company allegedly informed investors that their profits would be “going to the ‘moon’ imminently.” When the celebrities attached to SafeMoon stopped yapping about it, the value immediately plummeted. The company went back to that method, utilizing many different advertising methods, and it worked, building up the token’s value but only for a short period.
While investors patiently waited for the “wallet” to live up to its promise, chief technology officer Hank Wyatt decided to dip, suspiciously selling his tokens to investors. The lawsuit alleges that Wyatt “knew or should have known” that it was destined to fail. Following Wyatt’s departure and Jack Haines-Davies stepping down the price of the tokens went from a close of $0.000000153 on Sept. 9, 2021 to the low for the day of $0.00000119 on Sept. 10, 2021. A number of other execs also left the company “under similar circumstances.”
Soulja Boy and Lil Yachty are not the first notable Black celebrities caught up in some crypto shenanigans. Floyd Mayweather, T.I. has also gotten in trouble with digital currency.
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Photo: Jerritt Clark / Getty
