Shaquille O’Neal looks like he’s not going down without a fight in his crypto legal battle.
The legal saga started in November 2022 when FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, O’Neal, Stephen Curry, Naomi Osaka, and more were named defendants in a class action lawsuit, as previously shared by AfroTech. The filing described the celebrities’ endorsements of the cryptocurrency exchange as a “fraudulent scheme.”
Since then, it’s been reported that O’Neal has not only attempted to distance himself from FTX and crypto, but also dodged being served a legal document.
“People know I’m very, very honest,” O’Neal said, according to CNBC’s Make it. “I have nothing to hide. If I was heavily involved, I would be at the forefront saying, ‘Hey.’ But I was just a paid spokesperson.”
In April 2023, attorney Adam Moskowitz and his legal team, which represent a group of FTX investors, claimed to have officially hit O’Neal with the legal notice.
“Plaintiffs in the billion $ FTX class action case just served @SHAQ outside his house,” the Moskowitz Law Firm shared in a tweet. “His home video cameras recorded our service and we made it very clear that he is not to destroy or erase any of these security tapes, because they must be preserved for our lawsuit.”
However, the NBA legend’s legal team has now shared their own side of the story.
Los Angeles Times reports O’Neal’s attorneys allege the plaintiffs “tossed” the legal document at his car, and it landed on a public road.
“Mr. O’Neal has not evaded service by failing to be at the residences where plaintiffs belatedly attempted service or by driving past strangers who approached his car,” O’Neal’s lawyers wrote in the filing on May 8, according to the outlet.
In the same filing, his lawyers said that the plaintiffs failed to meet the deadline to serve O’Neal and requested that the suit against him be completely dismissed.
While O’Neal’s team is looking to close out the case, Moskowitz, who called the recent filing “really disappointing and surreal,” is still on a mission for the court to move forward.