(Bloomberg) -- Miami Heat basketball star Jimmy Butler and YouTube influencer Ben Armstrong agreed to pay a combined $340,000 to resolve claims that they helped dupe Binance Holdings Ltd. customers into buying unregistered securities.
Lawyers for the customers asked a federal judge in Miami on Monday to give preliminary approval to the settlement, which came after months of talks aided by a mediator. The buyers of the Binance securities would then be given the opportunity to object to the agreement at a hearing before the judge signs off on the deal.
The suit was filed last year against Butler and Armstrong, who goes by the name BitBoy Crypto, and includes Binance and co-founder Changpeng Zhao as defendants. It accused the company and its promoters of luring customers into purchasing cryptocurrencies and tokens, including Binance’s native BNB token, that were actually unregistered securities in violation of US law.
Binance and Zhao last year pleaded guilty to anti-money laundering and US sanctions violations under a sweeping settlement with the US that allows the crypto exchange to continue operating.
Darren Heitner, an attorney representing Armstrong, confirmed a resolution was reached on behalf of his client. A lawyer for Butler didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking comment. Armstrong and Butler denied wrongdoing as part of the settlement.
The proposed deal came after a federal judge in a separate lawsuit ruled that former NBA star Shaquille O’Neal was a “seller” of Astrals and Galaxy nonfungible tokens, if the allegations over the digital assets’ collapse prove correct.
The Binance customers’ case is Sizemore v. Zhao, 23-cv-21261, US District Court, Southern District of Florida (Miami).
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