Former Disney stars have had awful luck as adults.
Britney Spears is currently spiraling due to mental health concerns.
Now another former Disney star is in hot water after one scam blew up.
Child stars often have terrible problems once they become adults.
Growing up is difficult enough without being rich, famous, and a target for sexual predators.
Mean Girls star Lindsay Lohan has had her share of problems, and now she and several other celebrities are facing charges stemming from promoting a cryptocurrency scam.
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) recently announced charges against crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun, accusing him and his multiple companies of “orchestrating a scheme to pay celebrities to tout TRX and BTT without disclosing their compensation.”
Some of the celebrities embroiled in the scam were Lohan, Youtuber-turned-boxer Jake Paul, rapper DeAndre Cortez Way (aka Soulja Boy), musician Austin Mahone, rapper Miles Parks McCollum (Lil Yachty), singer Shaffer Smith (Ne-Yo), rapper Aliaune Thiam (Akon), and adult actress Michele Mason (Kendra Lust).
SEC Chair Gary Gensler explained, “Sun and his companies not only targeted U.S. investors in their unregistered offers and sales, generating millions in illegal proceeds at the expense of investors, but they also coordinated wash trading on an unregistered trading platform to create the misleading appearance of active trading in TRX…Sun further induced investors to purchase TRX and BTT by orchestrating a promotional campaign in which he and his celebrity promoters hid the fact that the celebrities were paid for their tweets.”
Essentially, Sun is being accused of paying celebrities for a pump-and-dump.
Gensler also added that Sun’s companies manipulated the crypto market “to make it appear actively traded without an actual change in beneficial ownership.”
With the exception of Way and Mahone, all the other celebrities agreed to pay $400,000 in damages without admitting guilt.
Lohan’s attorney Andrew Brettler said, “From the outset, she cooperated with the SEC’s investigation and ultimately agreed to disgorge the small amount of money she received and paid a fine to resolve this matter.”
Crypto has become a target for scammers and malinvestment like recently seen in the Sam Bankman-Fried fiasco involving FTX.
After FTX fell apart, Bankman-Fried confessed in an interview, “It’s what reputations are made of, to some extent…I feel bad for those who get f*cked by it. [B]y this dumb game we woke westerners play where we say all the right shibboleths and so everyone likes us.”
Crypto has been allowed to fly under the radar in large part because of great marketing, but the bloom is off the rose for many of the less reliable coins.
Many of these less reputable cryptocurrencies, or coins, will likely begin to fade away, although not without some market disruption.
People pumping crypto will have to be a lot more careful moving forward.