On-Chain Detective ZachXBT Slapped with Defamation Lawsuit
Prominent on-chain detective ZachXBT has been sued by NFT trader MachiBigBrother, otherwise known as Jeffrey Huang.
Huang alleged ZachXBT defamed him by publishing a report last year that claimed Huang embezzled tens of millions of dollars worth of crypto from unsuspecting NFT users, the crypto sleuth said in a Friday Twitter thread.
"It’s unfortunate I have to make this thread but I am being sued by MachiBigBrother for an article I published in June 2022," he said in a tweet.
"Today Machi filed the defamation lawsuit. The lawsuit is baseless and an attempt to chill free speech. I intend to fight back & defend free speech."
A screenshot shared by ZachXBT shows that the lawsuit was filed on Friday in the US District Court for the Western District of Texas.
It alleges ZachXBT defamed MachiBigBrother, "inflict[ing] serious reputational and monetary harm” on him. ZachXBT faces one count of libel and one count of libel per se, according to the complaint.
"Without any regard for the ruinous effect that public allegations of criminal conduct can produce for the accused individual, [ZachXBT] not only proceeded to publish his defamatory article on Medium.com, he also maliciously promoted the article to his more than 300,000 Twitter followers," MachiBigBrother's lawyer said in the complaint.
ZachXBT shared a link to the Medium post in the Twitter thread.
Titled “22,000 ETH Embezzled and Over Ten Projects Failed: The Story of Machi Big Brother (Jeff Huang),” the article accused Huang of launching “over 10 failed pump and dump tokens and NFT projects,” including treasury management service Formosa Financial.
The article claimed that Formosa Financial co-founder George Hsieh removed 11,000 Ether from the project’s treasury. The funds were
Read more on cryptonews.com
