Soulja Boy and Lil Yachty are among the defendants in a lawsuit over an alleged cryptocurrency “pump and dump” scheme.
It’s claimed the two rappers alongside Jake Paul, Nick Carter, and YouTuber Ben Phillips were recruited by SafeMoon to misleadingly promote the cryptocurrency, ‘V1’. Their endorsements then inflated the coin’s value, which allowed founder and CEO Braden John Karony and more executives to sell their holdings for a profit while it was high.
Allegedly, the ‘pump and dump’ strategy made the rise “astronomically” after it was created in March 2021. Apparently, the trading volume for SafeMoon tokens grew by 875 per cent after nine days of celebrity endorsements, and at its peak, it reached $191.6 million on April 22nd.
The lawsuit says SafeMoon promised to create a designated ‘wallet’, which would allow investors “have a better place” to keep their tokens which stabilised the coin’s value. However, it never appeared, and the value dramatically dropped on August 28th.
“On Dec. 31, 2021, the price of the SafeMoon Token hit a low of $0.0000006521 per token, an over 80 per cent drop from its height during the Class Period, which it has not been able to recover,” the lawsuit reads.
It continues: “As of the filing of this Complaint, the trading volume for the SafeMoon Token has plummeted to around only $60,000.”
They are both yet to comment on the claims.
