Lawsuit Alleges Celebrities Falsely Promoted Bored Ape NFTs – ARTnews.com

A class-action lawsuit filed Thursday alleges that Madonna, Jimmy Fallon and Paris Hilton, among other celebrities who promoted Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs, were compensated for those promotions and failed to disclose such deals.

In the complaint, filed in the federal Central District Court in California, plaintiffs Adonis Real and Adam Titcher said they bought NFTs made by Yuga Labs, the parent company of Bored Ape Yacht Club, among other NFT collections, after seeing support from influential celebrities, who they claim were part of a “huge scheme” to inflate the value of the NFTs.

The complaint further alleges that Yuga Labs executives conspired with Hollywood talent manager Guy Oseary, who represents Bored Apes, and crypto trading app Moonpay to get celebrities to promote BAYC NFTs while concealing that they were compensating those celebrities for promotions. Oseary and many of his clients were early investors in MoonPay, which the complaint alleges handled payments to celebrities, in crypto and in digital assets, for ostensibly “organic” marketing.

“Defendants’ advertising campaign was very successful, generating billions of dollars in sales and resales … The manufactured celebrity endorsements and deceptive promotions … were able to artificially increase interest in and price of the BAYC NFTs …, and investors to buy these losing investments at drastically inflated prices,” the complaint states.

Among the examples cited in the complaint was when Moonpay posted a clip in November 2021 from Post Malone’s music video for “One Right Now,” in which the rapper is seen buying a Bored Ape on the MoonPay app with musician The Weeknd. “This just happened,” the MoonPay post on Twitter read.

The plaintiffs’ lawyers claim that blockchain transactions show that Malone was transferred $1.4 million worth of ether in October 2021, which they claim is evidence that he was paid for his promotion of BAYC.

“MoonPay’s statement that ‘this happened’ misleadingly suggested to investors that the promotion of MoonPay and the BAYC NFT collection in the so-called music video by Defendants Post and Tesfaye [the Weeknd] was something that occurred because of their genuine interest in BAYC NFT,” the complaint states.

The complaint repeatedly singles out Oseary as a sort of mastermind in the alleged scheme, saying he “saw an opportunity to profit by using his celebrity contacts to promote sales of Yuga papers, and he took it.” The complaint further characterizes Oseary as a “fixer,” and claims he contacted artist Ryder Ripps to ask him to stop claiming the Bored Ape Yacht club is embedded with neo-Nazi dog whistles. Ryder Ripps and Yuga Labs are currently involved in a lawsuit over Ripps’ NFT collection RR/BAYC.

The celebrities named in the complaint include Oseary’s client Madonna, who discussed Bored Apes in a Rolling stone feature, Jimmy Fallon, who further promoted them and MoonPay The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallonas well as Justin Bieber, Gwyneth Paltrow, Serena Williams, Kevin Hart, Wardell Stephen Curry II and rapper Khalid promoted the Monkeys.

A spokesperson for Yuga Labs declined to comment at this time. Reps for Justin Bieber, Snoop Dogg and The Weeknd did not return our sister publication Billboardtheir requests for comment.