A former Theta executive accused the company's CEO of fraud and retaliation.

PANews reported on December 17th that, according to Decrypt, two former executives of 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, accusing Liu of using Theta Labs and its parent company, Silver VR Technologies, to inflate token prices through misleading collaborations and undisclosed insider token sales, while also retaliating against employees who raised concerns.

Lawyers representing Jerry Kowal allege that Mitch Liu used Theta Labs as a personal trading vehicle to commit fraud, self-serving transactions, and market manipulation. Liu's meticulously orchestrated pump-and-dump schemes repeatedly wiped out the value of investors and employees. Liu's alleged schemes also included "generating false quotes for NFTs," some of which involved high-profile collaborations with celebrities like Katy Perry. Berry's complaint also targets Theta's previous statements regarding Google, accusing the company of publicly misrepresenting a routine cloud services agreement as a strategic partnership. The complaint further alleges two other instances of self-serving transactions, alleging that "Theta's so-called 'partners' were actually other companies created and wholly owned by Liu."