Meteora Co-Founder Hit with New Lawsuit Over Token Scams Linked to Trump, Milei
Benjamin Chow, a well known crypto developer and co-founder of the Meteora decentralized change on Solana, has been fingered because the driving pressure behind a plan to cheat buyers by means of 15 completely different token schemes.
A revised model of a class-action lawsuit that was first filed in a New York federal court docket on April 21, 2025, says that Chow, Meteora, and Kelsier Ventures, a agency run by Hayden Davis and a few of his relations, used the names of well-known individuals like U.S. First Lady Melania Trump and Argentine President Javier Milei to give credibility to coordinated scams meant to milk cash from unwitting crypto buyers.
Mechanics of the Alleged Scheme
The preliminary complaint accused Chow, Meteora, and members of the Davis household of mendacity to crypto buyers. It stated they made cash on the expense of the general public by manipulating the worth of a Solana-based token known as M3M3, which had as a lot as 95% of its provide managed by a bunch of insiders.
The amended document now claims that fraud might have occurred with as many as 15 cryptocurrencies, together with the controversial MELANIA and LIBRA meme cash, which had been promoted by Mrs. Trump and President Milei, respectively. This data is claimed to have come from non-public messages shared by a whistleblower, wherein Davis allegedly admitted to finishing up “at the very least fifteen token launches at Chow’s path.”
Those suing say that Chow and the opposite defendants “borrowed credibility” from public figures and used them as “window dressing” to make their plans appear extra legit. For this cause, they don’t seem to be holding Melania or Milei accountable; as a substitute, they’re specializing in Meteora, its co-founder, and the Kelsier administration.
The new submitting claims that the alleged plot was carried out in a extremely organized means, with every participant having a transparent position. Chow was supposedly accountable for the technical aspect due to his “distinctive data of the code and the power to manipulate liquidity, charge routing, and provide controls.” As such, the complainants say it was potential for him to management the availability and costs of the brand new tokens, creating conditions the place their values may very well be artificially pushed up after which collapsed with out the data of bizarre merchants.
For the advertising and marketing aspect, the lawsuit factors to Kelsier Ventures, the place Hayden, Charles, and Gideon Davis used paid influencers and social media campaigns to make it appear like there was actual public demand for meme cash like MELANIA and LIBRA. The group reportedly used the identical method for all 15 tokens: they created synthetic shortage, flooded the web with paid promotions, after which, when costs went up, the insiders bought all their holdings without delay, which made the asset’s worth drop and left different buyers with big losses.
A Pattern of Denial and Mounting Evidence
According to the lawsuit, after the LIBRA token crashed in February 2025, Meteora pretended to blacklist Kelsier, a transfer the plaintiffs known as “performative.” Chow and members of the Meteora management are stated to have made sworn declarations describing themselves as “passive builders of autonomous software program,” suggesting that they had nothing to do with the worth behaviors of the crypto property in query.
The programmer quit Meteora in February, nonetheless insisting on his innocence, however knowledge from blockchain evaluation firms like Bubblemaps inform a unique story. Their report from February 17, 2025, adopted pockets addresses that clearly showed monetary ties between those that made MELANIA and LIBRA, whereas revealing that insiders made greater than $100 million in earnings.
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