Former basketball star and current NBA TV analyst Shaquille O’Neal has finally been served court documents for a FTX class-action lawsuit.

O’Neal is one of 16 FTX celebrity brand ambassadors that the Moskowitz Law Firm is taking action against for allegedly deceptively touting FTX.

O’Neal himself appeared in ads for FTX, but since the exchange’s collapse has tried to keep a distance from the company by saying that he was “just a paid spokesperson”.

But in an interview with PTF, Moskowitz said: “Once the FTX fraud was revealed, he ran away and has not been heard since.”

Tossed the court documents

O’Neal, who was also served last month for the FTX touting, allegedly ‘dodged the serving’, by stating that the court papers had been tossed at his moving car – and were therefore not properly served.

This latest, successful, serving happened on Tuesday night in Miami at the Kaseya Center (formerly FTX Arena) during Game 4 of the NBA’s Eastern Conference Finals, where O’Neal was commentating on the game.

According to Moskowitz, the process server bought a ticket to the game, and then managed to deliver the papers – which also included a lawsuit over the Astrals Project, an NFT project of 3-D avatars. The process server was then thrown out of the arena.

The other lawsuit, which was filed in US District Court in Florida, alleges O’Neal violated securities laws by selling unregistered securities.

“The allegations in the new crypto complaint are very serious and detail how him, his son and his business partner all founded this NFT Metaverse and he made promises every week that he would be extremely involved, so the value of the NFTs would grow greatly,” Moskowitz said.

Tweeted filing

Before the successful delivering, the law firm, which had been chasing O’Neal for months, took to Twitter to express its frustration.

“We represent thousands of FTX victims who lost their savings in the massive FTX fraud. We have been standing outside your TNT studios in Atlanta all week, but your security guards will not let us in, to just hand deliver our legal complaint,” they said.

Cryptocurrency YouTuber Tom Nash was also notified of a lawsuit by a tweet from Moskowitz earlier this month. According to the filing, he and other influencers promoted FTX “as a safe investment to their legions of followers”.

Kevin Paffrath, Graham Stephan, Andrei Jikh, Jaspreet Singh, Brian Jung, Jeremy Lefebvre, Ben Armstrong, Erika Kullberg, and Creators Agency, LCC were all named in the filing too.

Taylor Swift declined FTX offer

In the podcast Scoop, the legal firm’s managing partner Adam Moskowitz says that the celebrities who promoted FTX could be liable for as much as $5bn. Moskowitz also highlighted the case of popstar Taylor Swift, who turned down a $100m FTX sponsorship by doing due diligence on the platform and offering.

“In our discovery, Taylor Swift actually asked them: ‘Can you tell me that these are not unregistered securities?’” Adam Moskowitz said.

“You have been running from us for months & all other FTX celebrities have agreed to receive their complaints.”

The Moskowitz Law Firm

Besides Shaq O’Neal, these celebrities have also been named as deceptively promoting FTX:

• NFL legend Tom Brady;
• his ex-wife and supermodel Gisele Bundchen;
• NBA star Steph Curry;
• former baseball superstar David “Big Papi” Ortiz;
• Shark Tank investor Kevin O’Leary;
• Jacksonville Jaguars quarterback Trevor Lawrence;
• tennis player Naomi Osaka; and
• Miami Heat star Udonis Haslem.