Cuban, Mavs not backing down as celebrities settle crypto suit
DALLAS — Former NFL star Rob Gronkowski, NBA player Victor Oladipo and NASCAR driver Landon Cassill have agreed to pay a combined $2.4 million as part of a lawsuit involving defunct cryptocurrency platform Voyager Digital for their promotion of the crypto lender.
The settlements leave the Dallas Mavericks and its minority owner and “Shark Tank” entrepreneur, Mark Cuban, as the last remaining defendants standing in the lawsuit. But unlike the athletic trio, Cuban may not look to settle his portion of the lawsuit.
Cuban declined to comment, but his attorney, Stephen Best of Brown Rudnick LLP, said he and Cuban are waiting to see how the court rules on motions that could dismiss, transfer or limit the damages to a lower number.
“We are awaiting key dispositive rulings from the Court,” Best said in an email to the Dallas Morning News. “We are filing an unopposed position statement with the court this week that no part of the settlements with others are to have any force or effect on the Dallas Mavericks or Mark Cuban.”
According to Law360, Gronkowski is slated to pay $1.9 million. Oladipo, who retired from the NBA last year, will pay $500,000 and Cassill is on the hook for $25,000.
Cuban and the Mavericks announced a five-year partnership with Voyager in 2021 in which fans could receive a $100 reward if they deposited $100 and traded a minimum of $10 by the end of the month. The deal attracted so many prospective investors that Voyager implemented a waitlist.
However, the partnership almost immediately went sour. Only a few weeks after it was announced, digital currencies peaked before crashing with the global market cap of cryptocurrencies going from $2.9 trillion to $1.2 trillion. Voyager then filed for bankruptcy in July 2022.
Two months later, a class-action lawsuit was filed against Cuban and the Mavericks on behalf of the platform’s investors.
The suit said that Cuban leveraged his name and credibility to lead investors to trust Voyager and that he made “false and misleading promises.”
Though Cuban denied those accusations, the original complaint from 2022 said Voyager’s collapse ultimately cost investors more than $3 million. The class action suit also pursued athletes like Gronkowski, Oladipo and Cassill as each of them helped promote the platform to their fans.
The Moskowitz Law Firm, one of the firms representing the investors in the suit, did not respond to an interview request.
Best, Cuban’s lawyer, is a nationally recognized trial lawyer who has represented other big names like Elon Musk after U.S. security regulators accused him of fraud in 2018.