Dozens of them believe they have been wronged by influencers. A class action lawsuit has been filed by several people who believe they have been scammed by investing in financial products touted by famous Internet names.
Two collective complaints bringing together eighty-eight joint complaints, in particular for fraud and breach of trust were filed Friday with the Paris prosecutor, announced lawyer Alexandre Dakos during a press conference Monday, January 23. These complaints were filed “against X” but primarily target the practices of the influencer couple Marc and Nadé Blata “and the network that allows them not to act alone”, he explained. Contacted by AFP, Marc and Nadé Blata did not respond immediately.
These complaints follow the couple’s listing and promotion of two financial products, the NFT Animoon and the Blatagang trading channel, in which thousands of their subscribers have invested, without seeing the promised gains, according to the report. ‘lawyer. For the first, it is an NFT (non-fungible token“non-fungible token”), therefore a virtual work of art, and for the second a Telegram channel encouraging copy tradingvia investment platforms that offer to imitate the purchases of professional traders in the hope of getting rich easily.
First procedure
According to Mr. Dakos, the total damage is estimated at 6.3 million euros, with “thousands of investors who have lost from a few hundred to 100,000 euros” in these two projects. According to their lawyer, from Ziegler & Associés, a firm specializing in cryptocurrency scams, it would be a so-called scam. “carpet shot”. This widespread scam involves a developer attracting, sometimes with the help of influencer promotion, investors to a new cryptocurrency project and then pulling out before the project is built, leaving investors with worthless currency.
Marc Blata, who has more than 4 million followers on Instagram, has gained notoriety on social networks with his “crusty”presented as revelations about the world of reality TV, rap or football stars.
The procedure is ” a first “ according to the AVI Collective (help for victims of influencers) which initiated it and which brings together several alleged victims of the Blata couple. The collective declares in a press release that it wants “Warning the public about the dangers of promoting certain unscrupulous ‘stars'” and “pointing out the passivity of the platforms” while encouraging other victims to file a complaint.
Rapper Booba entered a crusade against the Blata couple in December 2021, regularly denouncing on social networks the risk of scams around products promoted by Dubai influencers. Another complaint targets influencer Dylan Thiry, who is accused of having embezzled money collected in the form of online kitties with his humanitarian association.