Jailed FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried turns on his celebrity endorsers, including Tom Brady, Gisele Bundchen and Larry David, and agrees to help crypto victims in a class action lawsuit against them

• Former FTX chief Sam Bankman-Fried, who is currently serving 25 years behind bars, has reached an agreement with investors to settle their civil claims
• Bankman-Fried will join a class action lawsuit against celebrities who promoted FTX with the aim of resolving current and future civil claims
• The celebrity list includes Tom Brady, Shaquille O’Neal, Stephen Curry, Shohei Ohtani, Gisele Bundchen, Larry David and others

Fallen cryptocurrency prodigy Sam Bankman-Fried, who is currently serving a 25-year prison sentence following a high-profile fraud case, has agreed to join a class action lawsuit against celebrities who promoted his crypto exchange.

By agreeing to work with the investors, they will now drop their civil liability claims against him.

Celebrities include some major sports stars, including Tom Brady, Shaquille O’Neal, Stephen Curry and Shohei Ohtani.

Brady’s ex-wife Gisele Bundchen and actor Larry David are also among those accused of promoting unregistered securities for FTX and luring investors into a Ponzi scheme.

The lawsuit alleges that crypto Bankman-Fried and the celebrities he recruited to endorse the company are responsible for approximately $11 billion in losses for U.S. consumers.

Many of the stars were “ambassadors” for the trading platform, while others appeared in primetime commercials.

The plaintiffs hope they can recoup some of their losses following the collapse of FTX in November 2022.

Bankman-Fried, 32, appealed his federal conviction earlier this month after U.S. District Court Judge Lewis Kaplan fixed the prison term and ordered him to pay $11 billion in forfeiture.

But in exchange for dropping the lawsuit, Bankman-Fried would hand over all non-privileged documents detailing his assets and his investment in artificial intelligence startup Anthropc, an affidavit declaring his net worth as negative, and documents on other defendants in the wide world. – extensive civil lawsuits.

Bankman-Fried has also agreed to release any information possible about venture capital firms that invested in FTX, along with a list of accountants and lawyers who worked with the exchange.

It’s not clear what liability a superstar endorsement could face, as Bankman-Fried paid the celebrities to raise the profile of his crypto empire.

Pro football quarterback Trevor Lawrence received a $500,000 payment in September 2022, Bloomberg reports.

The celebrities are described on the 41 pages as “parties who controlled, promoted, assisted, and actively participated in the FTX operations,” which allegedly violated Florida law.

The lawsuit adds: “The deceptive and failed FTX platform was based on false statements and deceptive conduct.

“Although many incriminating emails and text messages from FTX have already been destroyed, we have located them and they prove how FTX’s fraudulent scheme is designed to take advantage of unsophisticated investors from across the country, who use mobile apps to track their investments to do.

“As a result, American consumers have collectively suffered more than $11 billion in damages.”

NFL star Brady and Bundchen, his supermodel ex-wife, are named as FTX ambassadors who “participated in the company’s $20 million 2021 ad campaign” and starred in a commercial “in which they told acquaintances they were joining had to connect the FTX platform’.

Basketball player Curry is being singled out for appearing in an ad campaign where he said he didn’t need to be an expert in crypto because “with FTX I have everything I need to buy, sell and trade crypto safely.”

David appeared in a Super Bowl commercial for FTX, featuring a series of clueless characters who reject bright ideas throughout history, including the toilet and the light bulb.

The ad then showed David rejecting FTX, before a message appeared: “Don’t be like Larry.”

Shaquille O’Neal also appeared in an FTX commercial, as did Steph Curry. Osaka was an ‘ambassador’ for the company.

The lawsuit states: ‘The deceptive FTX platform maintained by the FTX Entities was truly a house of cards, a Ponzi scheme in which the FTX Entities distributed customer funds among their opaque affiliates, using new investor funds obtained by investing in the YBAs (yield holding accounts) and loans to pay interest on the old ones and to try to maintain the appearance of liquidity.

“Part of the scheme employed by the FTX entities involved using some of the biggest names in sports and entertainment – ​​such as these Defendants – to raise money and entice US consumers to invest in the (return-bearing) accounts), which were largely tendered and sold from the FTX entities’ domestic base of operations here in Miami, Florida, pouring billions of dollars into the Deceptive FTX Platform to keep the entire scheme running.”

The suit was filed in the Southern District of Florida U.S. District Court.

Bankman-Fried had risen to the top of the crypto world, becoming a billionaire before the age of 30 and turning FTX, a small startup he co-founded in 2019, into the world’s second-largest exchange platform.

But in November 2022, Bankman-Fried’s breakneck rise collapsed, with a flood of client withdrawals and revelations that billions of dollars had been illegally siphoned from FTX to Bankman-Fried’s personal hedge fund, Alameda Research.

He was convicted by a federal jury in New York in November 2023 on seven counts of fraud, embezzlement and criminal conspiracy.

At last month’s sentencing hearing, Bankman-Fried expressed regret over the company’s demise, which also affected many colleagues.

“It haunts me every day,” he said. “I’ve made a series of bad decisions.”

But the judge said Bankman-Fried had not fully accepted responsibility.

Bankman-Fried said “mistakes were made, but there was never a word of regret for committing a terrible crime,” said Kaplan, who branded the violations as “brazen” and hailed SBF for its “exceptional flexibility” regarding the truth.

“Since the collapse of FTX, Mr. Bankman-Fried has been solely focused on returning the estate’s assets to customers, which could and should be cured from current prices,” said Mark Botnick, a spokesman for Bankman-Fried.