




A mogul alleges he has been swindled by a Trump-affiliated crypto project
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.In 2023 things were not looking good for Justin Sun, a billionaire crypto-mogul. The Securities and Exchange Commission had accused him of fraud. The regulator claimed that the companies he founded and controlled had issued unregistered securities (two crypto tokens, Tron and BitTorrent); had manipulated the markets in those securities by “wash trading” to make the tokens look active and useful; and had paid celebrities to endorse them without disclosing they were being compensated.
In the wake of the allegations he stepped down from a diplomatic post he held as a trade representative for Grenada, an island in the Caribbean. He was afraid to set foot in America, lest he get arrested. By the end of the year two other kings of crypto would be toppled: Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of FTX, was convicted of fraud; and Changpeng Zhao, the founder of Binance, pleaded guilty to violating American money-laundering laws.The case was supposedly a strong one—but by November 2024 it had not yet been litigated.
Then, less than three weeks after Donald Trump won the election, Mr Sun began to buy some $75m-worth of tokens from World Liberty Financial (WLFI), a crypto project in which the Trump family would receive 75% of the proceeds of any crypto-token sales. In March 2025 the case the SEC had brought was suddenly settled, with no admission of wrongdoing and a $10m fine (small, given the gravity of the charges). Eleven days later the head of enforcement at the SEC resigned.Now Mr Sun is alleging he was duped.
On April 21st he filed a federal lawsuit in California against World Liberty, alleging various forms of mistreatment. Mr Sun says his tokens were frozen, meaning he could not sell them. At
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