The lawsuit, which was originally filed in August, aims to hold Cuban and Voyager CEO Steve Ehrlich liable for more than $5 billion in lost client funds. Cuban requested to split his testimony in court into two hearings, though that request was denied yesterday, according to court documents, with orders that Cuban deliver his testimony in one session on February 2.
Voyager investors have claimed that Cuban and Ehrlich lured naive clients to the platform, as Cuban, an avid cryptocurrency investor, promoted the cryptocurrency exchange numerous times to his followers. Cuban previously stated that he was a Voyager customer himself, stating that it was “as close to risk-free as you can get in the crypto universe.”
Cuban’s basketball team, the Dallas Mavericks, also entered into a five-year partnership with the now-bankrupt crypto exchange. At one point, the team ran a promotion where Mavericks fans would receive $100 worth of Bitcoin if they deposited $100 into Voyager.
“The Delivery Voyager Platform was an unregulated and unsustainable fraud, similar to other Ponzi schemes,” the class action lawsuit reads. “Defendants Mark Cuban and Stephen Ehrlich were key players who personally approached investors, individually and through the Dallas Mavericks, to induce them to invest in the Voyager Deceptive Platform.”
Voyager filed for bankruptcy last summer and was part of a chain of bankruptcies among cryptocurrency companies stemming from the collapse of Terra-Luna, which sparked a sell-off of digital assets. The firm is going through Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings. Binance.US has made a $1 billion offer to buy the assets of the defunct company, though the deal is under scrutiny by the Securities and Exchange Commission, which raised a limited objection to the transaction.
