Ne-Yo
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Source: Allen Berezovsky / Getty / Soulja Boy
Remember when crypto was all the rage? Now celebs who were out here pushing them are getting in T R O U B L E.
The SEC is cracking down on celebrities nefariously pushing crypto on normal people. Lil Yachty, Soulja Boy, Ne-Yo, Akon, Jake Paul, Lindsey Lohan, Austin Mahone, and adult film actress Kendra Lust were all hit with charges by the SEC for illegally promoting cryptocurrency.
According to Pitchfork’s reporting, everyone has agreed to pay a fine of $400K in “disgorgement, interest, and penalties” to settle the charges without admitting or denying the SEC’s findings. Mahone and Soulja Boy have yet to pay the funds.
The SEC also charged crypto pusher Justin Sun and three of his companies—Tron Foundation Limited, BitTorrent Foundation Ltd., and Rainberry Inc. (formerly BitTorrent Inc.) for the unregistered offer and sale of Tronix and BitTorrent. Sun is also in trouble for allegedly violating federal securities laws by plotting a scheme to inflate Tronix’s trading volume artificially.
Sun allegedly duped investors into buying Tronix and BitTorrent by using celebrity influencers and throwing them money to promote what the company was offering while telling them not to spill the beans on how much they were receiving in compensation.
Per the SEC:
While we’re neutral about the technologies at issue, we’re anything but neutral when it comes to investor protection. As alleged in the complaint, Sun and others used an age-old playbook to mislead and harm investors by first offering securities without complying with registration and disclosure requirements and then manipulating the market for those very securities. At the same time, Sun paid celebrities with millions of social media followers to tout the unregistered offerings, while specifically directing that they not disclose their compensation. This is the very conduct that the federal securities laws were designed to protect against regardless of the labels Sun and others used.
These latest celebs join the likes of T.I. who the SEC hit with a charge in 2020 for pushing bootleg initial coin offerings from a company called FLiK. In 2018, Floyd Mayweather and DJ Khaled felt the SEC’s wrath, with the boxer coughing up over $600K and the music producer having to pay over $150K and agree to not “promote any securities, digital, or otherwise,” for multiple years.
Kim Kardashian also got in trouble for the crypto jig as well and had to come out of her pockets. It was fun, but the SEC is not playing anymore.
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Photo: Allen Berezovsky / Getty
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Source: Donte Maurice / Jimmy Fontaine / BMF
Starz’s latest hit drama, BMF, shows no signs of slowing up and continues adding big names to its still-growing cast of stars.
We have no idea how long the story of the legendary Flenory brothers will continue in BMF, but it still has legs. Starz has announced that Grammy award-winning artists 2 Chainz and Ne-Yo will join the cast in recurring roles when season 3 arrives.
The two musicians join the likes of Eminem, Serayah, Caresha “Yung Miami” Brownlee, and Snoop Dogg, who have all graced television screens on the gritty Starz drama.
Per Variety:
2 Chainz will play Stacks, an Atlanta-born distributor whose wisdom and stature command respect wherever he goes. “Fiercely loyal and determined to provide for his family no matter the cost, Stacks lives by the street code and challenges Meech’s leadership style,” as Starz describes him.
BMF’s Story So Far
For those who haven’t had the opportunity to watch the latest show in 50 Cent’s drug-dealing cinematic universe, he is building on his on-again-and-off-again partner network Starz; it retells the story of how Big Meech” Flenory (Demetrius Flenory, Jr.) and Terry “Southwest T” Flenory (Da’Vinchi) took over the Detroit streets in the 80s and built their Black Mafia Family from the ground up.
Season two follows the brothers who have split, with Meech looking to expand his drug dealing empire and his brother Terry looking to go legit by focusing more on school and running a car-ride service with his father Charles (Russell Hornsby).
Terry gets sucked back into the drug game, reluctantly linking back up with Meech when things on the streets get hectic.
We can’t wait to see how 2 Chainz and Ne-Yo fit in on the show.
Photo: Donte Maurice / Jimmy Fontaine
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