Basketball star Shaquille O’Neal has finally been served in an FTX class action lawsuit — again.
O’Neal was served legal papers on Tuesday night in Miami at the Kaseya Center (formerly FTX Arena) during Game 4 of the NBA’s Eastern Conference Finals, according to Adam Moskowitz, a lawyer representing the FTX investors, as the Wall Street Journal reported.
Last month, Moskowitz told The Block that O’Neal was finally served in the case outside his Atlanta home after a three-month chase. But O’Neal had alleged in court that process servers tossed papers at his moving car and failed to officially serve him.
This time, a process server bought a ticket to the Tuesday game between the Miami Heat and Boston Celtics and delivered the papers again, according to Moskowitz. O’Neal was providing commentary on the game from a platform in the arena.
The process server approached O’Neal while he was on the platform and delivered the legal documents in the FTX case, according to Moskowitz. The process server also served O’Neal in a new lawsuit over the Astrals Project, an NFT project of 3-D avatars. The new lawsuit, filed Tuesday by Moskowitz in U.S. District Court in Florida, alleges O’Neal violated securities laws by selling unregistered securities. O’Neal later had the process server thrown out of the arena, according to Moskowitz.
O’Neal is among more than a dozen celebrities and sports teams who are being sued for promoting FTX, the now-bankrupt crypto exchange. He had at one point been so supportive of FTX that the company dubbed him “Shaqtoshi,” referencing Satoshi Nakamoto, the name of the person who apparently wrote the white paper on Bitcoin.
O’Neal has distanced himself from FTX in the wake of the company’s collapse. “I was just a paid spokesperson for a commercial,” O’Neal said after the company went bankrupt.
Former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried has pleaded not guilty to criminal fraud charges, while three other executives from the company pleaded guilty in federal court.
