TradeAI/StakX Lawsuit: Adams v. Gharib
Burwick Law filed a multi-plaintiff action against Guillermo Gharib and others over the TradeAI and StakX crypto scheme. Learn about the lawsuit.
On December 9, 2024, a complaint was filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, captioned Adams v. Gharib, Case No. 1:24-cv-9378-LAK, on behalf of 214 plaintiffs who collectively lost more than $20 million through what the complaint alleges was a cryptocurrency Ponzi scheme operated under the names TradeAI and StakX. The defendants are Guillermo Gharib, the purported mastermind trader behind both platforms, Ashley Harris, founder of VispX, Cyrus Abrahim, founder of Jungle Labs, James Abboss Binaiz (also known as Jim Aylward), Peter McInnes, Nicholas Schmidt, and Oliver Wood. Schmidt and Wood co-founded the crypto community On Chain Buccaneers, known as OCB.
According to the complaint, TradeAI launched in 2023 as an NFT-gated investment platform that promised extraordinary returns, some as high as 25% per week, supposedly generated by Gharib’s proprietary trading strategies. Investors were required to purchase specific NFTs, including the Genesis Pass, Anarkey, and Memewhales collections, through OpenSea in order to access high-yield investment pools denominated in USDT. Investors were also required to buy and hold the platform’s native token, $BeAI, creating artificial demand that allegedly benefited insiders. Prominent crypto influencers, referred to as Key Opinion Leaders or KOLs, promoted the pools to their communities through Discord and Twitter (now X), receiving a percentage of invested funds as “taxes.” The complaint alleges that the returns paid to earlier investors came not from actual trading profits but from funds deposited by new investors.
When TradeAI collapsed in October 2023, the complaint alleges, the same team rebranded the operation as StakX and launched a new series of “syndicates” that continued the same basic structure. Under StakX, investors sent funds directly to wallet addresses promoted by the defendants. New NFT collections, including PunkApe NFTs and the $BORD token, were introduced as access passes and yield boosters. The UA3 umbrella, led by Binaiz and McInnes, and the Jungle Labs umbrella, led by Abrahim and his Supreme Kong NFT and $JNGL token ecosystem, funneled investors into the syndicates. Abrahim’s Jungle Token ($JNGL) rose more than 3,000% before insiders allegedly liquidated their holdings near the peak. The complaint alleges that a review of over one million transactions showed the trading accounts actually lost more than $4 million. The complaint further alleges that Gharib admitted to one of the plaintiffs that TradeAI and StakX were Ponzi schemes.
The complaint brings claims under Section 5, Section 12(a)(1), and Section 12(a)(2) of the Securities Act of 1933, alleging that the NFTs, tokens, investment pools, and syndicates constituted unregistered securities sold through material misrepresentations and omissions. The complaint seeks rescissory damages, disgorgement of the defendants’ unjust enrichment, interest, and fees and costs.
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