These celebrities are being sued for fraud with 'Bored Ape' NFTs

Several prominent A-list celebrities — including Justin Bieber, Paris Hilton, and Gwyneth Paltrow — are being sued as part of a class-action lawsuit for the role they played in promoting the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs.

Other major celebrities named in the suit are Serena Williams, Post Malone, Kevin Hart, Snoop Dog, Stephen Curry, The Weeknd, DJ Khaleed, and Madonna.

Even 'The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon' and Fallon’s production company Election Hot Dog have been dragged into the fight.

Investors involved in the suit are claiming that Yuga Labs, Bored Ape Yacht Club’s parent company, and more than a dozen A-list celebrities peddled the non-fungible tokens without disclosing their investment in the company behind them.

"The Company’s entire business model relies on using insidious marketing and promotional activities from A-list celebrities that are highly compensated (without disclosing such), to increase demand of the Yuga securities," according to the complaint filed on December 8th in U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.

The suit also accuses each celebrity named of committing fraud "by convincing potential retail investors that the price of these digital assets would appreciate."

Most of Bored Ape Yacht CLub’s NFTs have plummeted in value since their January 2022 highs, some of which are now only worth about 10% of their original value. But who’s fault is this really?

Unintelligent investors who purchased a product they didn’t truly understand might be to blame. But there certainly is something to say about the role many celebrities played in hawking their bunk digital assets.

Jimmy Fallon might be the best example of a truly despicable fraudster. Fallon produced a segment on NFTs on NBC’s The Tonight Show in November of 2021, telling his viewers that he purchased his first NFT through the crypto firm MoonPay.

But Fallon failed to warn his audience that he actually held a financial stake in MoonPay, which might be more than just a conflict of interests...

Neither Fallon nor NBC disclosed that his "purportedly organic segment on the Tonight Show was, in reality, a paid advertisement for the [Bored Ape Yacht Club] collection of NFTs and MoonPay," the suit stated.

Ultimate blame might fall at the feet of Guy Oseary, the man behind most of the promotions and recruiting for Bored Ape Yacht Club’s celebrity marketing campaign.

According to the suit, Oseary recruited famous people in exchange for payment from MoonPay, a firm in which he was also heavily invested.

The deeper you dig into this whole debacle the more it becomes apparent that the whole campaign was one of smoke and mirrors, designed to lure unsophisticated investors into buying a volatile investment product to enrich Yuga Labs’ and MoonPay’s investors.

Remember Justin Bieber's $1.3 million dollar Bored Ape Yacht Club purchase back in 2021? Well, it turns out he was actually gifted that NFT in exchange for his promotion according to the suit.

Read more about Justin Bieber's NFT and how its worth plummeted

In a statement against the suit, Yuga Labs the claims against it are "opportunistic and parasitic," and they "strongly believe that they are without merit, and look forward to proving as much."

In the end, maybe it's time we trust celebrities a little less since it seems like every time they open their mouths it's to sell us some overpriced, hyped-up nonsense that’s only going to make them and their corporate overlords more wealthy.