Popular finance YouTubers, like Graham Stephan, Andrei Jikh, Jaspreet Singh, and others, should be held responsible for promoting the failed cryptocurrency exchange FTX, a new class action lawsuit alleges.
The lawsuit was filed by Edwin Garrison, a private investor. Garrison also filed a lawsuit against former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried himself.
Other celebrity promoters like Tom Brady, Stephen Curry, Shaquille O’Neil, Larry David, and Kevin O’Leary were included in the lawsuit.
According to Federal Trade Commission (FTC) guidelines for social media influencers, creators must disclose when they are being paid to promote a product.
Kim Kardashian, for example, settled with the FTC for $1.26 million last year for not properly disclosing that she was paid $250,000 to promote EthereumMax’s EMAX token.
TechCrunch reports that one of the influencers implicated in the lawsuit, Kevin Paffrath, said that the allegation is false.
The lawsuit also alleges that the YouTubers took part in a civil conspiracy with FTX and misled customers “with the false impression that any cryptocurrency assets held on the FTX Platform were safe and were not being invested in unregistered securities.”
