Well, it finally happened.
The lawyers behind the class-action lawsuit against athletes and celebrities who promoted cryptocurrency exchange FTX have finally managed to serve Shaquille O’Neal with a copy of that lawsuit.
O’Neal, who’s listed as one of many celebrity plaintiffs, along with Steph Curry, Tom Brady and Larry David, among others, in the $1 billion class-action lawsuit over their alleged roles in pushing the fraudulent cryptocurrency exchange, was served legal papers for two separate lawsuits while broadcasting for TNT during Game 4 of the Eastern Conference Finals between the Miami Heat and Boston Celtics.
It was only fitting that O’Neal was served while in the former FTX arena (now Kaseya Center). And if that’s not enough irony, the TNT personality had joked about his involvement in FTX on Tuesday with Curry. It seems like his involvement came due to influence from the Golden State Warriors star. And he was later served with papers after talking with Curry on Inside the NBA prior to Game 4 on Tuesday.
But as mentioned above, that isn’t the only complaint that’s been filed. The other complaint, which was also hand-delivered to O’Neal, focuses on his NFT project, Astrals, which launched last March. According to Decrypt, the lawsuit alleges that O’Neal’s NFT project had offered NFTs for sale that were unregistered securities and attached to promises made by O’Neal.
O’Neal had successfully evaded lawsuit service for months. Last month, plaintiffs asked the court permission to serve O’Neal digitally, given his active presence on both Twitter and Instagram. They’ve gone as far as to allegedly chuck legal documents at O’Neal’s car as he drove through the gates of his Georgia home.
O’Neal is the only plaintiff who hadn’t been served. And after all that, that’s no longer the case.
“In 30 years, I’ve never had to deal with this situation,” Adam Moskowitz, one of the lawyers representing the FTX investors, told the Wall Street Journal on Monday. “We are not going away.”
Well, that bore fruit on Tuesday, as O’Neal has officially been served with not one, but two lawsuits.
[Decrypt]
About Sam Neumann
Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.