Thirteen more parties are now involved in the $258 billion racketeering lawsuit filed against the world's richest person, Elon Musk. The suit alleges that Musk conducted a pyramid scheme for two years in order to drive up the price of Dogecoin by more than 36,000% before its eventual crash.
The suit, which was filed by an American Dogecoin investor, now names seven new plaintiffs and six new defendants, including Musk's construction company, Boring Co, and the coin-governing "non-profit", the Dogecoin Foundation. Other named defendants include Musk himself and his business ventures Tesla Inc
According to the suit, driving up the price of Dogecoin allowed the defendants to gain "tens of billions of dollars" at the expense of the other Dogecoin investors, who are the plaintiffs in this case. The investors allege that Musk knew all along that Dogecoin had no intrinsic value and instead "depended solely on marketing" to make the investment sound attractive.
"Defendants were aware since 2019 that Dogecoin had no value yet promoted Dogecoin to profit from its trading," the complaint reads. "Musk used his pedestal as World's Richest man to operate and manipulate the Dogecoin Pyramid Scheme for profit, exposure and amusement."
The complaint also describes Musk speaking positively about the coin to "people that work around the factory at SpaceX or Tesla" who asked him for support for Dogecoin, as he stated in an interview.
On the other hand, suit also includes a collection of comments from figures like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett regarding the questionable value of the coin.
Plaintiffs are seeking $258 billion in damages, representing three times the drop in Dogecoin's market value since May of last year, soon after Tesla began accepting bitcoin as payment. Plaintiffs are also asking the court to declare Dogecoin a form of gambling, and to barr Musk and his businesses from promoting the coin
This May, Musk appeared on Saturday Night Live playing a financial expert character and called Dogecoin, "a hustle". As a result, the value of the coin started plummeting, and it has continued to drop since then; although, the coin has seen occasional bumps relating to the lawsuit with a 5% boost coming after the expanded complaint was filed.
The case is Johnson et al v. Musk et al, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 22-05037.
