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• Plaintiff claimed $86 billion in damages, plus triple damages of $172 billion due to fall in Dogecoin’s price
• He asked court to block Musk and his companies from promoting Dogecoin and declare ‘meme-coin’ trading as gambling
Elon Musk, Tesla Inc (NASDAQ: TSLA) and SpaceX were sued for $258 billion over claims that they are running a pyramid scheme to back the cryptocurrency Dogecoin.
In a complaint filed in federal court in Manhattan on Thursday, plaintiff Keith Johnson, who is a Dogecoin investor, accused the electric carmaker, space tourism company and Musk, who is the CEO of both the companies, of racketeering for inflating the price of the digital currency, only to then let the price tumble.
Johnson, who claimed himself as “an American citizen who was defrauded out of money by defendants’ Dogecoin Crypto Pyramid Scheme,” filed the complaint, saying “defendants were aware since 2019 that Dogecoin had no value yet promoted Dogecoin to profit from its trading.”
“Musk used his pedestal as World’s Richest man to operate and manipulate the Dogecoin Pyramid Scheme for profit, exposure and amusement.”
The lawsuit also mentions comments from Warren Buffett, Bill Gates and others questioning the value of a digital currency.
Johnson is seeking $86 billion in damages, representing the decline in Dogecoin’s market value since May 2021, plus triple damages of $172 billion.
He also asked the court to block Musk and his companies from promoting Dogecoin and declaring that the ‘meme-coin’ trading constitutes gambling under US and New York law.
Dogecoin was trading on Thursday at around 5 cents, down more than 93% from its May 2021 peak of about 74 cents.
The case is Johnson v. Musk et al., US District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 22-05037.
Picture Credit: Coingape
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