O’Neal is Served in the FTX Lawsuit
- O’Neal was accused of using several tactics to evade being served with the complaint.
- Despite taking part in an FTX commercial, O’Neal claims he has little knowledge about crypto.
Attorneys for a group of FTX investors said they had succeeded in serving Shaquille O’Neal papers for his part in promoting the crypto exchange FTX alongside other celebrities. The lawsuit was brought last November in a Florida federal district court, and O’Neal was included as a defendant with other well-known endorsers, including Tom Brady and Larry David.
Attorneys at the Moskowitz Law Firm, who are defending investor Edwin Garrison in the class action, recently claimed that they had made several fruitless attempts to personally serve O’Neal with papers over the last few months.
Lawyer Adam Moskowitz claimed O’Neal was “hiding” from the complaint. Recent tweets from the lawyers claimed that O’Neal’s security at his TNT studios in Atlanta prevented them from delivering the complaint to the former basketball icon.
The law firm tweeted on Sunday that “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.”
O’Neal, who was dubbed “Shaqtoshi” in an FTX commercial, told CNBC that he does not understand crypto and will avoid it following FTX’s decline. However, Moskowitz believes O’Neal and other celebrities played a role in promoting FTX, “a massive Ponzi scheme run by geniuses at public relations and marketing.”
FTX filed for bankruptcy in November last year after investors and depositors withdrew their funds due to worries over the platform’s financial sheet. Federal authorities have since accused Bankman-Fried and a number of other executives of planning one of the worst financial frauds in US history. Bankman-Fried has entered a not-guilty plea to 13 counts of fraud and conspiracy. The 31-year-old was detained in December and is currently awaiting his trial, which is scheduled for October this year.
Lawrence has covered some exciting stories in his career as a journalist, he finds blockchain-related stories very intriguing. He believes Web3 will change the world and wants everyone to be a part of it.
