Elon Musk's $258B Dogecoin Racketeering Lawsuit Expands As More Plaintiffs Join In

The $258 billion racketeering lawsuit accusing Tesla CEO and tech billionaire Elon Musk of running a pyramid scheme for the cryptocurrency Dogecoin has swollen after seven more plaintiffs joined in and six new defendants were added, including his infrastructure and tunnel construction business The Boring Company.

The lawsuit, which was first filed on June 16 by a New England electrician named Keith Johnson in a Manhattan federal court, was amended Tuesday. It added seven new plaintiffs made up of investors who lost money in Dogecoin and six new defendants, including Musk's The Boring Company and the Dogecoin Foundation, a non-profit organization that provides governance and support to the dog-themed altcoin that was created as a joke.

New electronic summonses in the case were also sent to the tech billionaire and other named defendants Wednesday. Other defendants are Dogecoin developers, online influencers who promoted the meme coin, and software engineers Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer, who created DOGE.

The lawsuit alleged that despite being aware that the meme coin did not have enough value, Musk, along with other defendants, pocketed billions of dollars at the expense of Dogecoin investors by promoting the crypto asset to hype investors. Moreover, the case claimed that the defendants drove the price of DOGE to over 36,000% in more than two years and allowed it to crash.

"Defendants were aware since 2019 that Dogecoin had no value yet promoted Dogecoin to profit from its trading," the complaint noted. "Musk used his pedestal as World's Richest man to operate and manipulate the Dogecoin Pyramid Scheme for profit, exposure and amusement," it added.

Johnson filed the case asking for $86 billion in damages for the decline in Dogecoin's value since 2019 and wanted it tripled. He also asked the court to block Musk and his companies from promoting the meme coin and a judge to declare that trading the meme coin is "gambling" under New York and federal law.

The case is Johnson v. Musk et al, No. 22-05037 filed in the U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York. So far, no official reaction from Musk or other defendants has surfaced on public domains.

As of 10:15 p.m. ET Thursday, DOGE was trading up 0.81% at $0.06141 with a 24-hour volume of $278,014,596, based on the latest data from CoinMarketCap.