Failed gubernatorial recall candidate Caitlyn Jenner speaks at the East Valley Republican Women Federated headquarters in La Quinta, California on August 16, 2021.
Caitlyn Jenner is being sued in California for alleged securities fraud concerning her celebrity meme cryptocurrency, $JENNER memecoin. The plaintiffs in the case allege that they have lost tens of thousands of dollars as a result of her actions with the coin.
The plaintiffs in the case, Nazeem Azad of the United Kingdom and Nihai Caluseru of Romania, are suing the Fox News contributor and her manager Sophia Hutchins after they invested a combined $56,000 when it was on the Solana blockchain.
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It was later relaunched on the Ethereum blockchain, and they allege that they would not have invested were it not for “the false and misleading statements and omissions made by Jenner.” They allege Jenner “fraudulently solicited financially unsophisticated investors throughout the United States and abroad to purchase the unregistered securities,” stating that they did not have the technological prowess to understand the situation.
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“Because this type of digital asset is properly classified as a security under federal and California law, before offering $JENNER for sale to the public, Jenner was required to file registration statements with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, and to comply with all federal and state securities laws, which she willfully failed to do,” says the suit.
They further allege that she deliberately failed to register the cryptocurrency with the Securities and Exchange Commission, leading to buyers suffering “significant damages” due to lacking the information they needed to truly understand what they were investing in. They say that were JENNER registered, they wouldn’t have made the same choices.
They also allege that Jenner solicited help from crypto scammer Sahil Arora. He was ousted from the project by Jenner openly on social media, stating “F**K SAHIL! He scammed us! BIG TIME!”
The JENNER meme coin was launched on Solana through Pump.fun, and when it was relaunched on Ethereum, it lost almost all of its value, decreasing from $7.5 million to $170,000. The plaintiffs allege that Arora caused a crash due to him selling many of the tokens that he owned. Arora was not named in the suit.
The suit claims that Jenner abandoned the meme coin after she had appeared on numerous podcasts and in public appearances promoting it.
Jenner, however, made a statement in September, in which she mocks someone who lost their life savings into the meme coin. “Why would you put your life savings into a meme coin? Sorry you don’t believe in me anymore 🙁 but it’s all good! We aren’t going anywhere.”
Jenner has not yet publicly addressed the lawsuit and has not responded to a request for comment from cryptocurrency news outlet Cointelegraph.
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