Kim Kardashian legal team files motion to dismiss EthereumMax crypto lawsuit
Kim Kardashian’s legal team has filed a motion to set aside a class-action complaint aimed at the businesswoman and other American celebrities.
Kardashian and a handful of other prominent American social media influencers were served with a class action complaint in January 2022 over claims they had misled investors through the social media promotion of a cryptocurrency token called EthereumMax.
Kardashian had posted Instagram story posts promoting the project in June 2021, with the likes of boxing great Floyd Mayweather also embroiled in the lawsuit after promoting the Ethereum-based token in the build-up to a celebrity boxing bout against Youtuber Logan Paul during the same period.
Fans could purchase pay-per-view tickets with the tokens, which surged after the promotion of Kardashian and other influencers. The value of EthereumMax dropped significantly afterwards, leaving many out of pocket.
The original court filing that listed Kardashian, Mayweather and eight others claimed that company executives had collaborated with celebrity promoters to make misleading statements about the token and their control of the majority of tokens. Steve Gentile and Giovanni Perone were listed as co-founders of the project.
Related: Year of sponsorships: Celebrities who embraced crypto in 2021
Kardashian’s legal team has argued for the dismissal of the class action lawsuit in court documents reviewed by Cointelegraph, hitting back at the ten claims brought against the influencer. A key point was Kardashian's Instagram stories in question:
“Crucially, no named plaintiff alleges that they in fact viewed either Instagram post before purchasing tokens during the relevant time period.”The filing also argued that the plaintiffs' claims that influencers were paid in Ethereum (ETH) to promote EMAX were unfounded, given their lack of evidence that Kardashian had received financial compensation for her Instagram posts.
Kardashian’s legal team also highlighted that there was no evidence put forward of Kardashian ever purchasing, receiving, or selling the tokens herself. The defendants have together put forward an omnibus motion to dismiss the overall class action claims.
While Kardashian moves to distance herself from her involvement in the EthereumMax debacle, this is the latest instance where Mayweather has been involved in a shady cryptocurrency project promotion.
The boxer had previously escaped a lawsuit after promoting the fraudulent Centra Tech ICO in 2017 alongside American music producer DJ Khaled. The pair got off the hook after a judge ruled that investors failed to prove they’d bought tokens due to the promotional efforts of Mayweather and Khaled.