NBA legend Shaquille O’Neal has agreed to pay $ 1.8 million to settle a lawsuit brought by investors in the collapsed Crypto Exchange FTX, according to several media reports this week.
Investors claim that O’Neal mislead them by appearing in ads for the collapsed cryptocurrency exchange. The payment is about $ 1 million more than $ 750,000 O’NEAL was allegedly paid for his role in an FTX advertising.
The former basketball star was among several celebrities, including Tom Brady and Larry David, who were sued to promote the exchange before its collapse at the end of 2022.
O’Neal has maintained that he was simply a paid actor in the advertisement and said after the collapse of the exchange that he was “just a paid spokesman for an advertisement.”
If the settlement is approved, O’Neal is released from all future claims associated with the trial. He is not allowed to seek a refund from the FTX bankruptcy estate and does not have to admit any wrongdoing, according to the CNBC report.
The trial was brought on behalf of FTX users who deposited funds between May 2019 and the end of 2022, before the company’s dramatic failure.
FTX’s founder, Sam Bankman-Fred, was sentenced to 25 years in prison for scamming customers and investors. His judgment could be cut for over four years.
