Melania Trump, Javier Milei Used as 'Props' for Meme Coin Fraud, Lawsuit Alleges – Decrypt

A brand new class motion lawsuit submitting paints Meteora founder Benjamin Chow because the mastermind behind the infamous Libra and Melania meme cash, and asserts that the notable public figures—First Woman Melania Trump and Argentine President Javier Milei—who promoted them aren’t in charge for the alleged “crimes” associated to the “rip-off tokens.”

The claims come courtesy of the most recent filings in Hurlock v. Kelsier Ventures, a fraud and racketeering class motion lawsuit with Meteora, Chow, and others listed as defendants. The grievance particularly focuses on the launch of 5 tokens, with the Milei-promoted LIBRA and Trump-linked MELANIA being the highest-profile of the bunch.

“Defendants borrowed credibility from real-world figures or themes—such because the ‘official Melania Trump’ coin (MELANIA), [and] the ‘Argentine revival’ coin (LIBRA) tied to President Javier Milei,” the grievance reads. “These faces and types had been used as props to legitimize what was really a coordinated liquidity entice. Plaintiffs don’t allege these public figures had been culpable; they had been merely the window dressing for against the law engineered by Meteora and Kelsier.”

The First Woman promoted a Solana meme coin that used her personal title in January—simply two days after her husband, President Trump, launched his official token. The MELANIA coin shortly surged, earlier than crashing 99% within the following months because the meme coin group quietly dumped tokens.

Equally, Argentine President Milei promoted the LIBRA crypto token, which was branded as a software to fund small Argentine companies. It additionally skyrocketed in worth earlier than quickly tanking 90% in a matter of hours—and Milei quickly deleted his posts. On-chain analytics agency Bubblemaps discovered a hyperlink between the wallets used to launch MELANIA and LIBRA, ensuing within the aforementioned class motion lawsuit.

Relatively than blaming these notable figures, the plaintiffs allege that Chow was “on the middle of the enterprise.” The submitting claims that Meteora’s automated market maker enterprise was utterly separate from Chow’s “model, infrastructure, and code base” to run “pump-and-dump” tokens, which additionally operated underneath the Meteora title.

“Chow assembled a small group of trusted collaborators: Ng Ming Yeow (“Ming”), co-founder of Meteora and Jupiter; and the Davis household, performing via Kelsier Ventures (Hayden, Charles, and Gideon Davis), to execute the fraud,” the grievance says. “Collectively, they launched and marketed at the very least 15 tokens that adopted an an identical blueprint; this grievance particulars 5 of them.”

Hayden Davis, the CEO of Kelsier Ventures, discovered himself on the middle of the debacle after doing a spree of interviews following the collapse of LIBRA. Nevertheless, the submitting now claims that Davis executed “at the very least 15 token launches at Chow’s course,” and that the broader Kelsier agency labored “underneath [Chow’s] directions.”

Chow resigned from Meteora in February as particulars in regards to the meme coin launches began to emerge. Chow didn’t reply to Decrypt’s request for touch upon X or Telegram.

When Decrypt requested the legislation agency representing the plaintiffs, Burwick Legislation, why it believes that Chow was on the middle of the operation, the agency highlighted non-public Telegram screenshots of Davis explaining that he was working underneath Chow’s command. 

In August, nevertheless, a decide ordered that $57.6 million in USDC related to the Libra meme coin ought to be unfrozen, because the decide was “skeptical” that the plaintiffs would succeed of their case.

Kelsier Ventures didn’t reply to Decrypt’s request for remark.