London, June 17 (HNA) – Billionaire Elon Musk and his companies Tesla and SpaceX have been hit with a $258 billion lawsuit claiming they are part of a racketeering scheme to pump the dogecoin price.
Musk has helped the meme-based Dogecoin become a top ten cryptocurrency over the last 18 months—just weeks ago revealing one reason he thinks “people love dogecoin.” Musk didn’t immediately respond to emails seeking comment on the suit. Representatives of SpaceX and Tesla, and Tesla’s legal counsel, also didn’t respond right away.
The Dogecoin price has crashed over the last few months, losing more than 90 percent of its value since hitting an all-time high in May last year and dropping along with the price of bitcoin, Ethereum and the wider crypto market.
Keith Johnson, “an American citizen who was defrauded out of money by defendants’ Dogecoin Crypto Pyramid Scheme,” sued Musk and his companies, claiming they constitute an illegal racketeering enterprise to inflate Dogecoin’s price.
“Defendants falsely and deceptively claim that Dogecoin is a legitimate investment when it has no value at all,” Johnson said in his complaint, filed Thursday in federal court in Manhattan.