Floyd Mayweather and Kim Kardashian sued over crypto scam

A lawsuit, filed in the Los Angeles federal court on January 7, claims the reality star and boxing champion among others, including former NBA player Paul Pierce - touted tokens sold by EthereumMax, in order to boost its price and make themselves a profit 'at the expense of their followers and investors.'

Figures show the value of the cryptocurrency increased by 98 per cent in July just weeks after the stars had advertised it to their hundreds of millions of combined followers.

An advert posted by Kim in June reached one in five people in the US alone, and three in 10 crypto owners, according to data intelligence company Morning Consult.

According to the document, Kardashian promoted EthereumMax in a June 2021 post on Instagram when she had some 250 million followers. “Are you guys into crypto?” she wrote in the post, followed by the disclaimer “this is not financial advice” before adding that she wanted to share what her friends just told her about the EthereumMax tokens.

The suit was filed by a New York resident who bought EMAX tokens and lost money and is proposed as a class-action lawsuit, open to anyone who allegedly lost out after purchasing the tokens from mid-May to late June 2021.

The complaint claims, “The company's executives, collaborating with several celebrity promoters, made false or misleading statements about EthereumMax through social media advertisements and other promotional activities.”

Miss Kardashian, 40, did not say how much she was paid for the advert but a 2019 court filing revealed she can earn up to £361,000 for a single Instagram post.

Meanwhile, Mayweather promoted EthereumMax on his boxing trunks during a widely viewed exhibition fight with YouTube star Logan Paul in June, among other times.

The boxing match was streamed on Showtime and had up to 650,000 pay per view buys in the US alone.

Representatives for Kardashian and Mayweather did not immediately respond to requests for comment.