An amended complaint was filed Thursday in the federal class action lawsuit against Shaquille O’Neal over his NFT project Astrals, and the basketball icon faces allegations of violating securities laws in connection with offering Solana-based assets and a associated token.
The 111 page count submit comes after a Florida district judge named the case’s lead prosecutors last month, who are represented by counsel from The Moskowitz Law Firm. Managing Partner Adam Moskowitz told Decrypt the submission represents a crucial step forward.
“People have signed up and are judging [Federico] Moreno has selected our clients as lead plaintiffs,” he said. “That’s a big, big development because now it means they’re basically running the show for all investors, and they’ve selected us as class counsel.”
Moskowitz’s company is helping lead the charge in several other crypto-related class action lawsuits, including cases involving the bankrupt companies Voyager and FTX. When O’Neal got a complaint filed for the Astrals-focused lawsuit with a NBA game in Maythe phenomenon also received a complaint that stems from a commercial he did for FTX multiple previous attempts.
Thursday’s amended complaint — which is twice as long as the case initial one— offers a more robust picture of O’Neal’s involvement with Astrals, Moskowitz claimed, including now-deleted videos and tweets collected from websites like archive.org. O’Neal was in weekly, if not daily, contact with Astral team members, Moskowitz claimed.
An NFT from Shaq’s collection. Image: Astrals.
“What we have put in this amended complaint is much more comprehensive evidence of the personal involvement of Shaquille O’Neal, his business partner and his son with Astrals,” he said. “It is much more than we ever expected.”
O’Neal representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Decrypt.
The amended complaint alleges that Shaq was closely associated with Astrals and that the value of the project was “almost entirely related to O’Neal’s celebrity status.” But not long after the cryptocurrency exchange FTX – which O’Neal had backed – collapsed last November, the hoop legend is said to have disappeared from the Astrals community.
However, the suit alleges that he posted a GIF from the movie “The Wolf of Wall Street” with the phrase “I’m not fucking making” as his last post in the Astrals Discord community.
“But O’Neal has not been seen at Astrals since this now legendary ‘Wolf of Wall Street’ post,” the complaint alleges.
An alleged Discord screenshot of a Shaq post from the complaint. Image: Astrals
Astrals, a Solana-based NFT project, consisted of 10,000 “metaverse-ready” avatars linked to a DAO and a “story-driven, play-to-earn role-playing game,” according to part of the project’s white paper cited in the complaint. The lawsuit also challenges the DAO’s governance token, $GLXY, claiming that it is also an unregistered security.
The complaint names two major venture capital firms that partnered with Astrals and allegedly traded $GLXY, Cypher Capital and MH Ventures. While they are not listed as defendants, Moskowitz said, he said they will be served as the lawsuit progresses.
“We are not naming them yet, but if we get the chance, we will certainly issue third-party subpoenas to Cypher Capital in Dubai and MH Ventures in London,” he said.
Cypher Capital and MH Ventures did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Decrypt.
In July, O’Neil’s lawyers asked for the class action lawsuit to be dismissed, explaining that the digital assets in question were intended for gamers, not investors. Law 360.
According to a court file In late August, O’Neal’s motion was finally defeated. The district judge overseeing the case gave the basketball star a Sept. 29 deadline to respond to Thursday’s amended complaint.
