Cristiano Ronaldo Faces $1 Billion Class Action Lawsuit For Allegedly Promoting Unregistered Securities On Binance

Football star Cristiano Ronaldo is being sued over his involvement in allegedly promoting unregistered securities on Binance, according to a recent class action lawsuit filed with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.

In 2022, Ronaldo entered into a multi-year agreement with Binance, launching his first-ever NFT collection ahead of the soccer World Cup. He has since become a prominent figure in Binance’s advertising campaigns, leveraging the former Manchester United, Real Madrid and Juventus player’s global fan base and over 100 million social media followers.

The lawsuit alleges that Ronaldo engaged in a “sustained and aggressive” promotional campaign for Binance, claiming that these promotions were “deceptive and unlawful.” The plaintiffs argue that Ronaldo, knowingly or unknowingly, assisted Binance in “soliciting investments in unregistered securities by encouraging his millions of followers, fans and supporters to invest with the Binance platform,” aiding and abetting the company’s alleged fraudulent activities and causing them to suffer losses.

The U.S. Department of Justice settled a criminal case with Binance last week, which probed into alleged money laundering, fraud and sanctions violations. The crypto exchange will pay a $4.3 billion fine, marking one of the largest corporate settlements in U.S. history.

Binance’s former CEO Changpeng Zhao also pleaded guilty in a Seattle court last week to violating and causing a financial institution to violate the U.S. Bank Secrecy Act. He agreed to pay a $50 million fine and step down as CEO as part of the plea deal.

Ronaldo currently resides in Saudi Arabia after moving to Saudi Pro League side Al-Nassr in December 2022. Ronaldo has been served with a court summons mandating him to respond to the complaint within 21 days.

The filing against Ronaldo on Monday came alongside similar class-action suits naming Major League Baseball, Formula 1 racing, Mercedes-Benz MBG, +2.29% MBGYY, +2.21% and the advertising giants Dentsu and Wasserman, which created much of FTX’s global promotion campaign.

Messages left with representatives for MLB, Formula 1, Mercedes, Dentsu and Wasserman weren’t immediately returned.

Those suits are the latest in a series of class-action suits starting last year against celebrity endorsers of failed crypto exchanges such as Voyager and FTX, in which customers lost billions of dollars in deposits.

Over the past 18 months, a group of Florida lawyers led by Adam Moskowitz have brought the suits on behalf of investors who lost money in the crypto collapse against paid endorsers including Tom Brady, Gisele Bündchen, Shaquille O’Neal, Mark Cuban, Shohei Ohtani, Larry David, Steph Curry and Naomi Osaka.

“All of these celebrities were paid hundreds of millions of dollars taken directly from customer deposits,” Moskowitz said in a statement. “Some of the most famous and wealthiest groups in the world may now be held responsible for the dramatic $20 billion dollar [sic] crypto collapse and biggest financial scandals in U.S. history.”

Moskowitz, who has been joined in the suits by lawyers with the firms Mark Migdal & Hayden and Boies Schiller and Flexner, headed by famed litigator David Boies, is seeking at least $5 billion in damages from those who helped promote the crypto exchanges.

The cases from last year are ongoing, and the celebrities named have been battling the claims in court.

Moskowitz, who specializes in class-action suits, said issues revolving around crypto first got his attention more than two years ago, before the entire market crashed, when he came to believe that the special tokens each exchange was minting amounted to an unregistered security.

He first filed a lawsuit against Voyager early last year, before the exchange collapsed and the Securities and Exchange Commission began filing suits against many in the industry accusing them of dealing in unregistered securities. “Right then what we were doing started to gain traction,” Moskowitz said.

A series of favorable court rulings helped his cases to gain steam, he said, and allowed to him to take the lead in such actions.

In another class-action suit filed earlier this year, Moskowitz and his partners sued a group of YouTube financial influencers for their roles in promoting FTX, accusing them of taking cash for uncritically singing that exchange’s praises.