Former Theta Executive Accuses CEO of Fraud and Retaliation

BlockBeats News, December 17th. According to Decrypt, two former executives of the blockchain company Theta Labs have filed a whistleblower lawsuit in California, accusing the company and its CEO Mitch Liu of years of fraud, market manipulation, and retaliation. Former executives Jerry Kowal and Andrea Berry filed separate lawsuits in Los Angeles Superior Court, alleging that Liu used Theta Labs and its parent company Sliver VR Technologies to artificially inflate the token price through deceptive partnerships and undisclosed insider token sales, while retaliating against employees who raised concerns.

Lawyers representing Jerry Kowal pointed out that Mitch Liu treated Theta Labs as a personal trading tool to engage in fraud, self-dealing, and market manipulation. Liu's carefully orchestrated pump-and-dump schemes repeatedly wiped out the value of investors and employees. The schemes allegedly included "creating false NFT bids," some of which were linked to high-profile collaborations with celebrities like Katy Perry. Berry's complaint also called out Theta's previous statement regarding Google, accusing the company of publicly misrepresenting a routine cloud service agreement as a strategic partnership. The complaint also highlighted two additional instances of self-dealing, alleging that "Theta's supposed partners were actually other companies solely owned by Liu."