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[Trial Lawyer Went After Crypto Companies.Then Someone Went After Him.](//yro.slashdot.org/story/23/06/18/2346204/trial-lawyer-went-after-crypto-companies-then-someone-went-after-him) (sfgate.com)
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Trial lawyer Kyle Roche has led an interesting life,
But something very bad for his career happened in January of 2022 when two businessmen flew Roche from Miami to the U.K.to discuss an investment.When he woke up the next morning, Roche said, he felt groggy…The brain fog was odd because he didn’t think he’d had all that much to drink.As he flew back to Miami a few days later, Roche couldn’t shake the feeling that something was amiss.
Months passed.Then, one day last summer, Roche’s world detonated.A website called Crypto Leaks posted two dozen videos of him that had been secretly recorded during his meetings with Villavicencio and Ager-Hanssen.
The videos portrayed Roche and his law firm, Roche Freedman, as being in the pocket of one of their crypto clients [Ava Labs]…In other clips, Roche made it sound like his sole concern, even when representing other clients, was to promote Ava Labs’ interests…
One after another, companies that Roche Freedman had sued filed motions to disqualify the firm from their cases.
In October, the first of those motions succeeded: A federal judge in New York tossed Roche Freedman from a case it had filed against Tether, the operator of the world’s most used “stablecoin.” Within days, Roche was forced to resign from the law firm he had founded.With his career in tatters, he said, he enrolled in ethics classes and began to see a therapist.
Roche calls the recorded remarks baseless bluster to impress a prospective investor (and alleges in court there are signs of deep fake alterations).While Roche “was felled by his own loose lips and his overly cozy relationship with a client,” the Times reports “he also was the victim of an elaborate international setup.” On April 3, 2020, Roche Freedman filed lawsuits seeking class-action status against seven issuers of digital coins, alleging they had pumped what amounted to unregistered securities with false statements and then dumped them, leaving retail investors holding the bag…Those suits were just an opening salvo: Sixteen months later, Roche filed his biggest securities fraud case yet.
It alleged that a British entrepreneur, Dominic Williams, and entities he controlled had swindled investors out of billions of dollars by aggressively promoting, and then dumping, a digital coin tied to a grandiose plan to revolutionize computing.Williams had boldly proclaimed that his Internet Computer blockchain — a decentralized network of computers powered by a digital token called ICP — would supplant the big cloud services offered by Amazon and Microsoft and become humanity’s primary computing platform.But after an initial surge that briefly made it one of the most valuable cryptocurrencies, ICP had plummeted 92% — a collapse that Roche’s lawsuit attributed to “massive” selling by Williams and other insiders.(Williams denied the allegations.)
The Times reports that Roche’s prospective investor Ager-Hanssen, “in addition to running his venture capital firm, has long had a sideline digging up dirt on behalf of wealthy clients entangled in business disputes in Britain and Scandinavia.On multiple occasions, he has secretly recorded his targets.For example, in a 2014 interview, he recounted how he had snared the adversary of a Swedish financier with a hidden microphone and boasted that he employed former intelligence officers from the CIA, MI6 and Mossad…” Roche believes them because he thinks he knows who hired Ager-Hanssen: Williams, the British entrepreneur who was the target of Roche Freedman’s biggest pump-and-dump lawsuit…On May 12, 2022, Williams wrote on Twitter that he was “coming for” his critics.
That was the same day the cryptoleaks.info domain name was registered.That was the same day the cryptoleaks.info domain name was registered.Then, on June 9, 2022, the Crypto Leaks website went live.
Billing itself as the defender of “the honest crypto community,” it posted two reports that aligned with Williams’ interests…
The first espoused a complicated theory about the ICP token crash that Williams had previously floated on Twitter.The second attacked the Times for
Last month, the judge overseeing the pump-and-dump case granted Williams’ motion and disqualified Freedman Normand Friedland as plaintiffs’ counsel.
according to the New York Times.He once earned $100 million selling bitcoin.He helped win a case against Craig Wright (who claims to be Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto) through his law firm Roche Freedman.
And Roche also founded a startup that lets people bet on the outcome of (civil) lawsuits, ” to make access to justice more affordable.”
But something very bad for his career happened in January of 2022 when two businessmen flew Roche from Miami to the U.K.to discuss an investment.When he woke up the next morning, Roche said, he felt groggy…The brain fog was odd because he didn’t think he’d had all that much to drink.
As he flew back to Miami a few days later, Roche couldn’t shake the feeling that something was amiss.
Months passed.Then, one day last summer, Roche’s world detonated.A website called Crypto Leaks posted two dozen videos of him that had been secretly recorded during his meetings with Villavicencio and Ager-Hanssen.The videos portrayed Roche and his law firm, Roche Freedman, as being in the pocket of one of their crypto clients [Ava Labs]…
In other clips, Roche made it sound like his sole concern, even when representing other clients, was to promote Ava Labs’ interests…
One after another, companies that Roche Freedman had sued filed motions to disqualify the firm from their cases.In October, the first of those motions succeeded: A federal judge in New York tossed Roche Freedman from a case it had filed against Tether, the operator of the world’s most used “stablecoin.” Within days, Roche was forced to resign from the law firm he had founded.With his career in tatters, he said, he enrolled in ethics classes and began to see a therapist.
Roche calls the recorded remarks baseless bluster to impress a prospective investor (and alleges in court there are signs of deep fake alterations).While Roche “was felled by his own loose lips and his overly cozy relationship with a client,” the Times reports “he also was the victim of an elaborate international setup.” On April 3, 2020, Roche Freedman filed lawsuits seeking class-action status against seven issuers of digital coins, alleging they had pumped what amounted to unregistered securities with false statements and then dumped them, leaving retail investors holding the bag…Those suits were just an opening salvo: Sixteen months later, Roche filed his biggest securities fraud case yet.It alleged that a British entrepreneur, Dominic Williams, and entities he controlled had swindled investors out of billions of dollars by aggressively promoting, and then dumping, a digital coin tied to a grandiose plan to revolutionize computing.
Williams had boldly proclaimed that his Internet Computer blockchain — a decentralized network of computers powered by a digital token called ICP — would supplant the big cloud services offered by Amazon and Microsoft and become humanity’s primary computing platform.But after an initial surge that briefly made it one of the most valuable cryptocurrencies, ICP had plummeted 92% — a collapse that Roche’s lawsuit attributed to “massive” selling by Williams and other insiders.(Williams denied the allegations.)
The Times reports that Roche’s prospective investor Ager-Hanssen, “in addition to running his venture capital firm, has long had a sideline digging up dirt on behalf of wealthy clients entangled in business disputes in Britain and Scandinavia.
On multiple occasions, he has secretly recorded his targets.For example, in a 2014 interview, he recounted how he had snared the adversary of a Swedish financier with a hidden microphone and boasted that he employed former intelligence officers from the CIA, MI6 and Mossad…” Roche believes them because he thinks he knows who hired Ager-Hanssen: Williams, the British entrepreneur who was the target of Roche Freedman’s biggest pump-and-dump lawsuit…On May 12, 2022, Williams wrote on Twitter that he was “coming for” his critics.
That was the same day the cryptoleaks.info domain name was registered.
That was the same day the cryptoleaks.info domain name was registered.Then, on June 9, 2022, the Crypto Leaks website went live.Billing itself as the defender of “the honest crypto community,” it posted two reports that aligned with Williams’ interests…
The first espoused a complicated theory about the ICP token crash that Williams had previously floated on Twitter.The second attacked the Times for
an articleit had published about the crash.Williams tweeted a link to that Crypto Leaks report, calling it “Gobsmacking.” The Dfinity Foundation, a Swiss nonprofit that Williams created to oversee his blockchain, has since sued the Times for defamation in New York.The Times is seeking to dismiss the suit.The videos of Roche were the crux of Crypto Leaks’ third exposé.
After they were published, Williams and Dfinity filed a motion to disqualify Roche Freedman as plaintiffs’ counsel in the pump-and-dump lawsuit, saying Roche’s comments demonstrated “a disregard for the integrity of the judicial system….”
Last month, the judge overseeing the pump-and-dump case granted Williams’ motion and disqualified Freedman Normand Friedland as plaintiffs’ counsel..
