Clifford Harris Jr., better known as T.I., is no longer facing securities accusations related to his participation with a streaming platform’s digital tokens after the Eleventh Circuit ruled on Monday that the plaintiff waited too long to sue.
Circuit Judge William Pryor, district Judge Emily Coody Marks, and Chief Judge Robert J. Luck affirmed a lower court’s decision to dismiss the lawsuit because it was submitted after the statute of limitations had expired.
Kenneth Finance, an investor who acquired $3,000 in FLIK, filed a lawsuit against Harris Jr. and Felton in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia in 2019, accusing them of three securities offenses.
Earlier, Plaintiffs accused T.I. and Ryan Felton of duping them into paying over $1.3 million for now-worthless securities known as FLIK Tokens in a security fraud action filed in 2017.
The Defendants used social media, celebrity endorsements, and well-known industry experts to create the false impression that FLIK Tokens were a valued liquid investment in a traditional “pump and dump” scheme.
When the “pump” ended and the price of FLIK Tokens climbed from $.06 to $.21, the Defendants and linked parties “dumped” their tokens and vanished from social media. FLIK’s celebrity endorser was Kevin Darnell Hart.
In a separate matter in 2020, The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged two crypto startups and eight individuals including rapper Clifford Harris Jr.with violating the Securities Act of 1933 and other charges due to their involvement with a pair of initial coin offerings (ICOs).
The SEC said that film producer Ryan Felton stole cash and washed traded cryptocurrencies using the proceeds of two initial coin offerings (ICOs): FLIK, a digital streaming platform, and CoinSpark, a digital asset trading platform.
Owen Smith, Chance White, and William Spark, Jr., all of whom live in Atlanta, were charged with breaching securities legislation by advising investors to acquire tokens from one or both of the sales without disclosing they were paid by the projects. The rapper agreed to pay $75,000 and not participate in any digital asset sales until 2025.
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