Elon Musk, a proponent of Dogecoin and a tech billionaire, has been charged with insider trading in a proposed class action lawsuit by investors.
The filing claimed that Musk engaged in “publicity stunts” using Twitter, hiring online influencers, and appearing on NBC’s Saturday Night Live to trade advantageously at their cost using many Dogecoin wallets that he or Tesla controls.
Such actions cost investors billions of dollars, they alleged.
Investors also cited Musk’s decision to change Dogecoin’s look from Twitter’s blue bird emblem, where he allegedly sold $124 million DOGE in April after a 30% price hike, in a filing with a federal court in Manhattan.
A “deliberate course of carnival barking, market manipulation, and insider trading” enabled Musk to defraud investors and promote himself and his companies, the filing stated.
Alex Spiro, a lawyer for Musk and Tesla, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Elon Musk requested the dismissal of a $258 billion racketeering case on March 31, which accused him of operating a pyramid scheme to support the cryptocurrency Dogecoin.
Lawyers representing Musk and his electric car firm Tesla Inc termed the lawsuit by Doge investors a “fanciful work of fiction” over Musk’s “innocuous and often silly tweets” about the memecoin.
Dogecoin $258B Lawsuit Devoid Of Merit- Musk’s Lawyers
The attorneys argued that the investors’ explanations of how Musk intended to deceive anyone or the risks he concealed were insufficient and that his words about “Dogecoin Rulz” and “no highs, no lows, only Doge” were too ambiguous to serve as evidence of fraud.
“There is nothing unlawful about tweeting words of support for, or funny pictures about, a legitimate cryptocurrency that continues to hold a market cap of nearly $10 billion,” Musk’s lawyers said. “This court should put a stop to plaintiffs’ fantasy and dismiss the complaint.”
In a footnote, the attorneys denied the investors’ assertion that Dogecoin met the criteria for being a security.
Additionally, they blamed the world’s richest man for intentionally inflating Dogecoin’s price by more than 36,000% over the course of two years before allowing it to crash.
They submitted their latest accusations in a proposed third amended complaint, in a lawsuit that began last June.