The lawyer leading the class action lawsuit against FTX’s celebrity endorsers has recently said that singer-songwriter Taylor Swift was one of the few celebrities who did their due diligence before making a decision to endorse the now fallen crypto exchange.
Attorney Adam Moskowitz, who specializes in class action lawsuits, said in an episode of The Scoop podcast with Frank Chaparro that FTX’s celebrity endorsers didn’t check if they would be in any sort of trouble before signing on to promote FTX via TV and online ads.
“The one person I found that did that was Taylor Swift,” Moskowitz said. “In our discovery, Taylor Swift actually asked them, ‘Can you tell me that these are not unregistered securities?’”
Moskowitz is seeking $5 billion in a class action lawsuit against a long list of FTX celebrity boosters — including the likes of NFL quarterback Tom Brady, supermodel Gisele Bundchen, NBA legends Shaquille O’Neal and Steph Curry, tennis star Naomi Osaka, and comedian Larry David. He’s accusing these celebrities of promoting the sale of unregistered securities in the form of yield-bearing accounts.
It was reported in December that FTX’s disgraced founder Sam Bankman-Fried had wanted to pay Swift $100 million to endorse the exchange, in a deal that allegedly included a ticketing arrangement that would allow fans to use non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to pay for Swift’s concerts.
But a person familiar with the discussion denied these reports and said that Swift gave no indication of wanting to endorse the now-bankrupt crypto exchange.
“Taylor would not, and did not, agree to an endorsement deal. The discussion was around a potential tour sponsorship that did not happen,” the person said.
Before it burned itself to the ground, FTX was backed by the biggest names in asset management including BlackRock, Sequoia Capital, Softbank, the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, and many more. Many of these maintain that they did do due diligence but chalked up the risks to the nature of the emerging industry, and decided to push through with the investment anyway.
The Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan said in December that they did months of due diligence, sent “a long list of questions related to FTX’s financial affairs, but only received answers to a small fraction of them.”
Information for this story was found via The Block, Twitter, and the sources and companies mentioned. The author has no securities or affiliations related to the organizations discussed. Not a recommendation to buy or sell. Always do additional research and consult a professional before purchasing a security. The author holds no licenses.
