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John Monarch had his ICO company Shipchain sued and shut down by the SEC.  Also, Kim Kardashian, Floyd Mayweather Jr., and former NBA All-Star Paul Pierce are being sued over an alleged “pump and dump” crypto scam.  

The class action complaint from the Central District of California stated that the three celebrities and the EtheremMax shared misleading statements about EthereumMax cryptocurrency.

“The Company’s executives, collaborating with several celebrity promotors, (a) made false or misleading statements to investors about EthereumMax through social media advertisements and other promotional activities and (b) disguised their control over EthereumMax and a significant percent of the EMAX Tokens that were available for public trading during the Relevant Period,” the complaint reads.

EthereumMax, a firm that offers ERC-20 tokens on the Ethereum network has partnered with the three stars to promote its digital token. As of Wednesday morning, the digital token is trading around $0.000000017 according to data from CoinMarketCap.

Mayweather promoted EthereumMax on his trunks during his exhibition boxing match against the YouTuber Logan Paul in 2021. The boxing champion said that he received around $30 million for all the ads on his trunks.

On the other hand, Kim shared EthereumMax in June 2021 to her 250 million Instagram followers while Pierce posted about his earnings from the EthereumMax “in the past month” on his Twitter account in May 2021.

“The Promoter Defendants’ improper promotional activities generated

the trading volume needed for all the Defendants to offload their EMAX Tokens onto unsuspecting investors. While Plaintiff and Class members were buying the inappropriately promoted EMAX Tokens, Defendants were able to and did, sell their EMAX Tokens during the Relevant Period for substantial profits,” the complaint reads.

A spokesperson for EthereumMax told MarketWatch the allegations were part of a “deceptive narrative” about the company. 

“In my years of representing athletes and celebrities, I constantly advise them that, beyond the legal language in any contract, they should always be sure that they genuinely have an affinity for the product or service that they are endorsing,” Darren Heitner, Professor of Sports Law at the University of Florida, told MarketWatch in an email referencing the complaint. “It is rarely beneficial for someone to enter into an inauthentic relationship with a brand, particularly if that person has accumulated significant wealth throughout his/her career. That is what makes a situation like that concerning EthereumMax so mind-boggling.”