NBA legend Shaquille O’Neal has quietly inked a settlement deal with disgruntled investors, who have blamed the basketball player for the million dollars they have lost following the collapse of the FTX crypto exchange.
According to a court document filed on Wednesday in the U.S District Court, O'Neal and the plaintiffs have reached an amicable proposed result while the details of the settlement remain confidential.
The class action lawsuit was brought by Edwin Garrison in late 2022, an Oklahoma man who claimed he bought an unregistered security from FTX after seeing the company's advertisement, featuring O'Neal.
Garrison filed the lawsuit on behalf of others impacted by the fallout, criticizing O'Neal and many other celebrities for failing to do their due diligence before marketing the company to the public.
Alongside O'Neal, other high profile celebrities, including NFL quarterback Tom Brady, supermodel Gisele Bunchen, and billionaire investor Larry David all faced similar lawsuits with allegations of contributing to investors' losses by endorsing the now-bankrupt exchange.
O'Neal have not admitted to any wrongdoings, stating that he was just a paid spokesperson for the commercial.
Notably, FTX investors claim that they have been playing a long game of cat-and-mouse with the basketball player, just to serve O'Neal his legal papers during the early stages of the lawsuit.
According to the lawyers representing the investors, they only managed to successfully serve the legal documents into O'Neal's hands after 20 failed attempts.
The legal teams claimed that they spent months trying to reach the NBA legend, and had to resort to creative tricks, including attempting service during NBA games or camping for hours outside his residences just to "catch him".
O'Neal was "finally caught" at one of his games in Miami, during the middle of his match at the NBA Eastern Conference Finals.
O'Neal later denied that he has been running away from the plaintiff's lawyers, pushing the blame back to the lawyers, claiming that the court papers were "tossed" at his car in Georgia; thus he was never actually served.
This is not O’Neal’s first brush with crypto-related litigation. In 2024, he and his associates agreed to an $11 million settlement to resolve a class-action lawsuit tied to his involvement in the Solana-based Astrals NFT project.
In May 2023, O'Neal was served with a class-action lawsuit involving his promotion of the Astral NFT project, alleging the NFTs promoted by O'Neal were unregistered securities.
A Florida court ruled that O’Neal could plausibly be considered a “seller” under securities law, further highlighting the legal risks for celebrities endorsing digital assets.
Astrals is a Solana-based project featuring 10,000 NFTs, a metaverse called Astralworld and a decentralised autonomous organisation (DAO) with a governance token called Galaxy.
O’Neal’s settlement is part of a broader reckoning for celebrities who lent their names and influence to crypto ventures without fully understanding the risks or regulatory implications.
As FTX’s bankruptcy process unfolds—with another round of creditor payments scheduled and ongoing warnings about phishing scams targeting affected investors—the spotlight remains on the accountability of public figures in the volatile world of crypto.
For the crypto industry, this case is a stark reminder: star power can drive massive adoption, but it also comes with legal and reputational risks when things go wrong.
As regulators and courts continue to scrutinize celebrity crypto endorsements, the era of unchecked influencer marketing in digital assets may be coming to an end.
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