In most of the countries in the world, including Bangladesh, celebrities generally fail to exhibit strong morale or respect towards the fans and followers while signing sponsorship deal with dubious enterprises. But Taylor Swift has been an exception. When she was offered US$100 million sponsorship deal by infamous Sam Bankman-Fried to represent his fraudulent cryptocurrency exchange FTX, the celebrity singer and songwriter asked about unregistered securities and avoided signing the sponsorship deal with FTX.
It may be mentioned here that celebrities like Both Tom Brady and Stephen Curry are being sued for endorsing the now-bankrupt and fraudulent crypto exchange. Adam Moskowitz appeared on “The Scoop” podcast to discuss the lawsuit, and said that the plaintiffs are seeking over US$5 billion from FTX’s celebrity endorsers, including Shaquille O’Neal, Tom Brady and Larry David.
According to the lawyer, celebrities did not do their due diligence to check whether FTX was breaking the law. “The one person I found that did that was Taylor Swift”, Moskowitz told The Scoop’s Frank Chaparro, adding that Taylor Swift pulled out of the deal and never promoted the fraudulent FTX.
According to the Financial Times, Taylor Swift’s father, who used to work for Merrill Lynch, began discussing the US$100 million tour sponsorship with FTX in the fall of 2021.
The terms included selling tickets as NFTs, although FTX marketing staff told the Times that “no one really liked the deal” and they thought it was “too expensive from the beginning”.
“In our discovery, Taylor Swift actually asked them: ‘Can you tell me that these are not unregistered securities?'” Moskowitz said.
Fraudulent crypto exchange FTX imploded in November 2022 after concerns that the commingling of funds with its sister concern – Alameda Research, led to mass-customer withdrawals. It did not have enough cash to fulfill that demand, partly due to lavish spending and a US$65 billion line of credit.
FTX mastermind Sam Bankman-Fried was arrested in the Bahamas a month later and currently he faces over 100 years in prison if found guilty of charges including securities fraud, money laundering and bribery.
Although celebrity endorsers of FTX are now facing a US$5 billion lawsuit in the United States, in Bangladesh, unfortunately a number of celebrities who has signed contracts with several fraudulent entities such as Evaly, Dhamaka, Destiny etcetera are yet to face the music although these so-called ecommerce and or Multi-Level Marketing (MLM) enterprises owe billions of takas to customers and clients, including newspapers, TV channels and advertising agencies.
