Ryan Huegerich, a New York resident, and other claimants filed a class-action lawsuit against  Kim Kardashian, Floyd Mayweather Jr, and Paul Pierce in a California district court, for promoting an Ethereum knockoff, Ethereum Max (EMAX), according to a lawsuit filed on January 7. The investors acquired EMAX tokens between May 14, 2021, and June 27, 2021, and the complaint was placed on classaction.org, which serves as a consumer resource for class action litigation.

Unknown entities behind the knockoff coin

Apart from suing the celebrities, New York resident Huegerich is also suing the as-of-yet unidentified business body that is behind the EMAX tokens. The EMAX cryptocurrency reached an all-time high of $0.0000008546 in May of last year, however at the time of publication, it was trading at $0.0000000197, roughly 97% less than that figure. The EMAX token was promoted to Kardashian’s Instagram followers in June via a post in which she asked: When compared to other types of investors, celebrities and influencers are more likely to be sought after by cryptocurrency investors, with Kardashian’s EMAX promotion via Instagram having a 19% conversion, as per the Morning Consult survey results. In September 2021, the chairman of the Financial Conduct Authority in the United Kingdom, Charles Randell, slammed Kardashian’s for pushing the risky token. He claimed this: “may have been the financial promotion with the single biggest audience reach in history.”

Mayweather and Pierce are also being sued

When Pierce promoted EMAX, he did it in the form of a Tweet, last May, in which he poked fun at his old employer ESPN. While, during an exhibition boxing bout in which he met the YouTuber, Logan Paul, Mayweather wore a shirt with the EthereumMax logo on it. The plaintiffs alleged the Defendants marketed the EMAX Tokens to investors so that “they could sell their portion of the Float for a profit,” whether anything comes from the lawsuit remains to be seen.