Crypto Scam: Soulja Boy, Lil Yachty and Lindsay Lohan face charges of illegal advertising

Crypto entrepreneur and investor Justin Sun was charged with fraud by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) last Wednesday (March 22). At the same time, eight celebrities were accused of illegally promoting his products. Among them are musicians Akon, Soulja Boy, Ne-Yo, Lil Yachty and Austin Mahone, as well as YouTuber Jake Paul, Lindsay Lohan and porn actress Kendra Lust. They are all said to have done paid advertising for the Sun-managed currency “Tronix” without disclosing that they were paid for it. With the exception of Soulja Boy and Mahone, everyone involved has already paid $400,000 in damages and rescinded their fees. In this way they will probably avoid a court case.

Sun, meanwhile, also kept the compensation for these advertising measures secret. He is also said to have manipulated the course of the currency and the business volume for trading other of his blockchain-based products through illegal bogus transactions since 2017. Through this practice he was able to generate sales of up to 31 million dollars.

The crypto hype

For some of those involved, the situation is likely to have a déjà vu factor. Soulja Boy shared a tweet promoting another virtual currency in January 2022. However, when copying the promotional content, he forgot to remove the section disclosing his fee in the event of some appreciation. Additionally, he, Lil Yachty, and Jake Paul have previously promoted the same company at the same time. However, the business practices at “SafeMoon” also turned out to be not entirely legal.

It is well known that the blockchain hype has not stopped at musicians. Snoop Dogg recently announced that he wanted to convert the label “Death Row Records” he had bought into an NFT forge. In the plans for his urban development project in Senegal, “Akon City”, Akon even provided for its own cryptocurrency for commerce within the metropolis of the future.

Many of the currencies that emerged after Bitcoin’s success have proven significantly less successful or prone to market manipulation. Investments in blockchain-based products have not yet become bombproof investments either. Just last November, one of the world’s largest crypto exchanges, investment banker Sam Bankman-Fried’s currency exchange FTX, filed for bankruptcy, causing some turmoil in the market.

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