Web3 is Going Just Great

Terms of the settlement include 100% repayment of investments made by victims in the five states that settled: Texas, Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, and Georgia.

GS Partners has also faced regulatory scrutiny in other US states, as well as in Canada, Australia, and South Africa.

At first, people widely believed her account had been hacked, given how frequently celebrity token promotions turn out to be compromised Twitter accounts. Then, she began joining Twitter spaces and posting videos about the token, but with the emergence of more and more convincing deepfakes, even those didn't convince people that it was truly Jenner behind the token.

Despite the confusion — or perhaps because of it — the token has been popular.

The token launch was linked to Sahil Arora, a person allegedly connected to multiple celebrity rug pulls and pump-and-dumps. However, Jenner quickly turned on Arora shortly after the token's launch, posting on Twitter "FUCK SAHIL! He scammed us! BIG TIME!" and that "Sahil appears to be fully out".

Jenner is not the first in her family to get mixed up with crypto. In October 2023, her stepdaughter Kim Kardashian was fined over $1 million for unlawful touting of a crypto security.

Zachxbt outlined various incidents, including how Crypto Rover purchased "Stoned Pepe" tokens before posting to his hundreds of thousands of followers that he thought the token would "do at least a 10x", and claiming that he had inside info on the project. He also detailed how Rover had taken a $10,000 payment and 1% of the supply of a new token that he promised to promote, then never promoted — despite promising the team that he could "pump projects from 1/2m to 10m easy".

After zachxbt published his research, Rover deleted his Telegram channel.

The NFT buyers — er, "co-producers" — were promised credit in the film credits, voting rights on the script, and a split of 80% of the profits. "Although there is nothing guaranteed, on average, you will make six to seven times what you put in 24 months. Which is huge, when you think, you go to the Caisse d'Epargne, a traditional bank, and you make less than 1% in the year," said one promotional video.

A report from French investigative newspaper Mediapart discovered that the project was backed by a Dubai-registered company called "Illuminart", which played on confusion between its name and that of the France-based Universal Studios subsidiary Illumination. An Illuminart marketing campaign even used Illumination titles, such as The Lorax, Minions, and Despicable Me, and their box office proceeds to suggest Plush buyers were in for a 516% profit.

Meanwhile, the project has gone silent, and its Twitter account last posted in September 2022. NFTs are no longer offered for sale on the official project website, and Illuminart's business license has expired.

Pierce had made posts on Twitter, including writing shortly after he was fired from ESPN that "ESPN I don't need you. I got EthereumMax. I made more money with this crypto in the past month than I did with y'all in a year. TRUTH shall set u Free". The SEC pointed out that although he had been given EMAX tokens prior to the post, they were priced at around $46,000, not nearly the more than $1 million he'd made at ESPN over the previous year. Pierce later made a post claiming that he held more than $2.5 million of EMAX tokens, but the SEC alleged in the lawsuit that "his own personal holdings were in fact far lower" and that Pierce had been provided the screenshot of another person's holdings.

In October 2022, Kim Kardashian paid $1.26 million to settle charges over touting the same cryptocurrency, a fairly unknown token that nevertheless splashed out heavily for influencer and celebrity promotion in what appears to be a pump-and-dump scheme.