Copyright Decrypt
In brief First Lady Melania Trump and Argentine President Javier Milei aren't to blame for the "scam tokens" they promoted, investors claim in a legal filing. Rather, the plaintiffs claim that Meteora founder Benjamin Chow was the "center of the enterprise," with Hayden Davis and Kelsier Ventures working under his instructions. The class action lawsuit follows the notorious Melania and Libra meme coin launches, with both coins surging upon launch before collapsing in price. A new class action lawsuit filing paints Meteora founder Benjamin Chow as the mastermind behind the notorious Libra and Melania meme coins, and asserts that the notable public figures—First Lady Melania Trump and Argentine President Javier Milei—who promoted them aren’t to blame for the alleged “crimes” related to the “scam tokens.” The claims come courtesy of the latest filings in Hurlock v. Kelsier Ventures, a fraud and racketeering class action lawsuit with Meteora, Chow, and others listed as defendants. The complaint specifically focuses on the launch of five tokens, with the Milei-promoted LIBRA and Trump-linked MELANIA being the highest-profile of the bunch. “Defendants borrowed credibility from real-world figures or themes—such as the ‘official Melania Trump’ coin (MELANIA), [and] the ‘Argentine revival’ coin (LIBRA) tied to President Javier Milei,” the complaint reads. “These faces and brands were used as props to legitimize what was actually a coordinated liquidity trap. Plaintiffs do not allege those public figures were culpable; they were merely the window dressing for a crime engineered by Meteora and Kelsier.” The First Lady promoted a Solana meme coin that used her own name in January—just two days after her husband, President Trump, released his official token. The MELANIA coin quickly surged, before crashing 99% in the following months as the meme coin team quietly dumped tokens. Similarly, Argentine President Milei promoted the LIBRA crypto token, which was branded as a tool to fund small Argentine businesses. It also skyrocketed in value before rapidly tanking 90% in a matter of hours—and Milei soon deleted his posts. On-chain analytics firm Bubblemaps found a link between the wallets used to launch MELANIA and LIBRA, resulting in the aforementioned class action lawsuit. Rather than blaming these notable figures, the plaintiffs allege that Chow was “at the center of the enterprise.” The filing claims that Meteora’s automated market maker business was completely separate from Chow’s “brand, infrastructure, and code base” to run “pump-and-dump” tokens, which also operated under the Meteora name. “Chow assembled a small group of trusted collaborators: Ng Ming Yeow (“Ming”), co-founder of Meteora and Jupiter; and the Davis family, acting through Kelsier Ventures (Hayden, Charles, and Gideon Davis), to execute the fraud,” the complaint says. “Together, they launched and marketed at least 15 tokens that followed an identical blueprint; this complaint details five of them.” Hayden Davis, the CEO of Kelsier Ventures, found himself at the center of the debacle after doing a spree of interviews following the collapse of LIBRA. However, the filing now claims that Davis executed “at least 15 token launches at Chow’s direction,” and that the broader Kelsier firm worked “under [Chow’s] instructions.” Chow resigned from Meteora in February as details about the meme coin launches started to emerge. Chow did not respond to Decrypt’s request for comment on X or Telegram. When Decrypt asked the law firm representing the plaintiffs, Burwick Law, why it believes that Chow was at the center of the operation, the firm highlighted private Telegram screenshots of Davis explaining that he was working under Chow’s command. In August, however, a judge ordered that $57.6 million in USDC associated with the Libra meme coin should be unfrozen, as the judge was “skeptical” that the plaintiffs would succeed in their case.
