Dogecoin has gained a lot of attention and popularity in recent years, thanks to the support and promotion of Elon Musk, the billionaire founder and CEO of Tesla, SpaceX, and Boring Co. Musk has often tweeted about Dogecoin, calling it his favorite cryptocurrency and joking that he would send it to the moon with a SpaceX rocket. He has also appeared on Saturday Night Live, where he called Dogecoin “a hustle” in a comedy sketch.
However, not everyone is amused by Musk’s antics. A group of investors has filed a $258 billion lawsuit against Musk and his companies, accusing him of running a pyramid scheme to manipulate the price of Dogecoin and profit from it at the expense of other investors.
The New Founding Could be Detrimental for Musk’s Defense
According to the legal complaint, Musk, and the other defendants manipulated the market for Dogecoin, a cryptocurrency that was created as a joke and has no real use case.
The complaint alleges that they artificially inflated the price of Dogecoin by more than 360 times from 2019 to 2021 through coordinated social media campaigns and public statements, and then dumped their holdings when the price peaked, causing massive losses for unsuspecting investors.
The motion filed by the lawyer representing the plaintiffs seeks to remove Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan and Allison Huebert, Tesla’s in-house counsel, from defending Tesla or its CEO, Elon Musk. The motion claims that Musk and Tesla have divergent interests because the CEO supposedly used his Twitter account independently.
Spencer contends that Tesla may have a legal claim against Musk, which would make their conflict impossible to resolve even if New York allows lawyers to represent both companies and their officers at the same time.
The most interesting part of the filing comes from the exhibit that accompanies it. Most of the motion addresses Spencer’s response to a June 15 New York Post article that he attached as an exhibit. The article describes a June 9 letter from Musk and Tesla defense attorney Alex Spiro of Quinn Emanuel to Spencer.
The letter from Spiro accused Spencer of filing a baseless and false amended complaint and warned him of possible sanctions. He said that Spencer knew that his allegation against Musk and Tesla had no factual basis before filing it.
He also denied that Tesla or Musk owned the crypto wallets that Spencer mentioned in his complaints. He said that the complaint was doomed to fail because Tesla and Musk never sold any Dogecoin.
He said that no reasonable attorney would believe that the third amended complaint was factual.
