A class action lawsuit filed in the Southern District of New York accuses Meteora co-founder Benjamin Chow of orchestrating a systematic fraud scheme that weaponized celebrity endorsements from Melania Trump and Argentine President Javier Milei to defraud retail crypto investors of at least $57 million.
The Second Amended Class Action Complaint alleges Chow and associates operated the Meteora-Kelsier Enterprise as a “fraud factory” disguised as decentralized finance, using the Meteora liquidity-pooling protocol on Solana as the core engine for multi-token pump-and-dump operations across $M3M3, $LIBRA, $MELANIA, $ENRON, and $TRUST.
Plaintiffs Omar Hurlock, Anuj Mehta, and John Winslow claim that defendants exploited technical settings, like whitelists and freeze/thaw toggles, to acquire a majority of the token supplies at negligible cost before manufacturing artificial price spikes through undisclosed paid influencers.
Forensic analysis identified a central coordinating wallet, prefixed 0xcEA, that repeatedly funded deployer wallets, creating tokens, seeding initial liquidity, and financing sniper wallets that captured early supply.
Source: Court Listener
The lawsuit seeks disgorgement of all profits, trebling of compensatory damages under RICO statutes, and appointment of a qualified independent receiver over Meteora’s upgradeable smart-contract programs.
Six-Step Fraud Playbook Exploited Celebrity Endorsements
The complaint details a systematic playbook used across all tokens.
It begins with narrative invention using borrowed fame, then rigging supply through insider-funded accounts that execute opening-second orders, manufacturing hype through undisclosed paid Key Opinion Leaders, and engineering price spikes using Meteora’s pool controls to pause public trading until insider positions are secured.
It also involves executing extraction by selling massive positions while draining liquidity, and reinventing the scheme with new themes but recycled tooling.
The $LIBRA fraud exemplified this pattern when Argentine President Javier Milei’s verified social media account posted the contract address at the exact moment pools opened in February 2025, triggering a retail stampede.
The campaign styled $LIBRA as a patriotic Argentine revival initiative promising to fund small businesses.
Within hours of launch, the deployer wallet withdrew over $110 million in USDC stablecoin liquidity, stripping the token of its foundation and causing instant price collapse, coinciding with Milei’s post-retraction.
The $MELANIA fraud marketed the token as the official meme coin of Melania Trump, with claimed vesting mechanisms to protect against dumping.
Wallets connected to the Meteora-Kelsier cluster accumulated approximately one-third of the entire supply in minutes before the official launch.
After orchestrated hype, insider wallets dumped tokens into the surge, with the price subsequently losing over 90% of market capitalization within days.
Kelsier Ventures CEO Hayden Davis, who co-founded both $LIBRA and $MELANIA, stated in a YouTube interview that “we sniped our own coin to prevent snipers from sniping our own coin.“
Chow Resigned in February, Now Faces RICO Charges
Back in February 2025, Ben Chow stepped down from Meteora following the $LIBRA controversy, with Jupiter co-founder Meow stating that, while confident in Chow’s character, he showed “a lack of judgment and care about some of the core aspects of the project.”
A leaked video posted by SolanaFloor showed DeFiTuna founder Dhirk informing Chow about Davis’s misconduct, with Chow expressing visible shock and stating, “I feel so sick, because I gave him Melania. I fucked up because I enabled the guy that should not have been enabled.“
The lawsuit alleges that Chow maintained unique expertise in controlling technology, directing the configuration of liquidity pools, fee routing, trading parameters, and the ability to freeze or thaw trading selectively.
Kelsier Labs secretly agreed to invest approximately $2 million into Meteora’s operations as a pay-to-play buy-in.
Source: Court Listener
Whistleblower communications confirm Hayden Davis acted under Chow’s instructions on more than fifteen token launches, establishing central command.
The complaint asserts seven causes of action, including fraud, conspiracy to defraud, RICO violations for a pattern of racketeering activity consisting of thousands of wire fraud acts, deceptive practices under New York General Business Law, and unjust enrichment.
The timing coincides with broader scrutiny of Trump family crypto ventures, which reportedly generated $1 billion in pre-tax gains over the past year.
The $TRUMP and $MELANIA coins generated approximately $427 million, while both tokens experienced dramatic declines during the presidential inauguration, with $MELANIA’s market cap plummeting from $2 billion to $790 million.
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