Shaquille O’Neal Served in FTX Case, Ending 3-Month ‘Sideshow’

NBA legend Shaquille O’Neal is said to be the only celebrity who avoided servers of the FTX endorsement lawsuit

article-image

Ron Adar/Shutterstock, modified by Blockworks

share

NBA Hall of Famer Shaquille O’Neal has finally been served by lawyers representing investors in a class-action lawsuit against FTX celebrity endorsers.

O’Neal was handed official legal documents outside his Texas residence at 4pm local time on Sunday. Adam Moskowitz, managing partner and class-action co-counsel at The Moskowitz Law Firm, confirmed the serving to Blockworks in an email.

“The good news is his home video cameras recorded our service and we made it very clear that he is not to destroy and/or erase any of these security tapes because they must be preserved for our lawsuit,” he said.

As of last week, O’Neal was the last remaining defendant named in the suit to be served. O’Neal joins Tom Brady, Larry David, Gisele Bündchen, Stephen Curry and Kevin O’Leary, among others.

The development ends a three-month hunt to serve the former basketball superstar over his role in endorsing the now-defunct crypto exchange FTX.

FTX pushed sweeping marketing campaigns, including Super Bowl ads, celebrity endorsements and naming rights to the Miami Heat’s arena. Some promotions reportedly promised investors greater returns than a typical deposit account.

Loading Tweet..
Shaquille O’Neal still lives on FTX’s Twitter timeline

The lawsuit was filed by a retail investor on behalf of other FTX users who’d been influenced to use the platform by celebrities. O’Neal’s “FTX: I Am All In” commercial, cited by Garrison, was created by New York advertising agency Dentsu McGarrybowen and global partnership firm Wasserman.

FTX filed for bankruptcy last November following an $8-billion wave of withdrawals, which quickly led to allegations of severe mismanagement and fraud. Former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried has pleaded not guilty to federal charges and awaits trial later this year, while close associates have struck plea deals to cooperate with the US government.

Lawyers had until Monday to hand over official legal documents to O’Neal after Judge Michael Moore, presiding, issued a deadline after denying a request to serve the celebrity via Twitter.

“We took Judge Moore’s instructions very seriously and are glad to finally end this silly sideshow,” Moskowitz said. Blockworks attempted to contact O’Neal via his philanthropy website but did not immediately receive a response.


Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross. Subscribe to the Empire newsletter.

Explore the growing intersection between crypto, macroeconomics, policy and finance with Ben Strack, Casey Wagner and Felix Jauvin. Subscribe to the Forward Guidance newsletter.

Get alpha directly in your inbox with the 0xResearch newsletter — market highlights, charts, degen trade ideas, governance updates, and more.

The Lightspeed newsletter is all things Solana, in your inbox, every day. Subscribe to daily Solana news from Jack Kubinec and Jeff Albus.

Tags

Upcoming Events

Javits Center North | 445 11th Ave

Tues - Thurs, March 18 - 20, 2025

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

recent research

Unlocked by Template.png

Research

RTK networks are critical to enabling a world of ubiquitous autonomous drones, vehicles, and industrial robots. We believe the GEOD token enables both a cost and product advantage for the GEODNET RTK network, which will allow it to out-compete multi-billion dollar incumbents Trimble and Hexagon.

article-image

HashKey’s Jupiter Zheng highlighted three success areas he’s watching: Ethereum, Solana and certain tokens in DeFi

article-image

Jack explored the various AI and memecoin projects that have sprung up over the past month

article-image

If gold remains steady today, a single move from bitcoin to $98,500 would do it

article-image

Revenue estimates for the third quarter come in at $33 billion, which would be an 83% increase from the prior year

article-image

Senator Cynthia Lummis hopes a US strategic bitcoin reserve can be teed up for “adoption in 2025”

article-image

As EIP-4844 “blobs” transform the economics of Ethereum layer-2s, a growing debate pits long-term scalability against immediate ETH value