Snoop Dogg, Post Malone and several other celebrities have been named as codefendants in a lawsuit involving Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT.
According to Complex, the class-action lawsuit was filed in a Los Angeles federal court against Yuga Labs Inc, the cryptocurrency company behind the popular NFTs.
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The plaintiffs who initiated the suit, Adam Titcher and Adonis Real, allege that several celebrities, including actors, musicians, athletes and more, were paid off the books to “misleadingly promote” and boost the value of Yuga Financial Products.
The complaint reportedly claims that Yuga recruited entertainment manager Guy Oseary to come up with a pan to “leverage their vast network” to inflate the company’s value. Post, Snoop, The Weeknd, Kevin Hart, Justin Bieber and and others are accused of promoting Bored Ape and other Yuga offerings through MoonPay, a financial tech company believed to be associated with Oseary’s Sound Ventures.
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“Defendants’ promotional campaign was wildly successful, generating billions of dollars in sales and re-sales,” the lawsuit reads. “The manufactured celebrity endorsements and misleading promotions regarding the launch of an entire BAYC ecosystem (the so-called Otherside metaverse) were able to artificially increase the interest in and price of the BAYC NFTs during the Relevant Period, causing investors to purchase these losing investments at drastically inflated prices.”
There are a total of 37 defendants listed in the complaint, including Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, NFT artist Beeple, as well as other celebrities such as Future, DJ Khaled, Diplo, Jimmy Fallon, Madonna and more.
A representative of Yuga Labs issued a statement through Fox News in response to the lawsuit saying: “In our view, these claims are opportunistic and parasitic. We strongly believe that they are without merit, and look forward to proving as much.”
Snoop Dogg jumped into the NFT space with Bored Ape earlier this year, starting with the music video for his Eminem collaboration “From The D 2 The LBC.” Post Malone joined the fray with a video shared on Instagram via Moonpay. In the video, Post is sitting on his phone purchasing two Bored Ape NFTs that he says his friends are going “to freak out” because they love everything about non-fungible tokens.
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Posty purchased Bored Ape #961 and #9039 for a combined total of 160 ETH (Ethereum), an equivalent of $734,401.60.
