The plaintiffs listed in the lawsuit come from across the globe, including the U.S., France, South Africa, South Korea, the Czech Republic, Russia and the Isle of Man. The largest single investment was $600,000, by an individual in Greece.
The investors allege that, starting in August 2017, T.I. and Felton began a social media compaign on platforms including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube announcing the ICO of FLiK on coinexchange.com, a cybercurrency marketplace, and the creation of a company of the same name that would back the currency with entertainment-related deals. It was also announced that T.I. had joined FLiK as a co-owner, and that Tony Gallippi, cofounder of Bitcoin payment processor BitPay, was signed on as an advisor, according to the lawsuit.
At one point during the campaign, the lawsuit says, Hart tweeted a photo of him and Harris, with Hart saying, "I'm Super Excited for T.I. and FLiK They're gonna crush it!" Later, FLiK claimed on social media that the token was going to be integrated into a U.S. military set-top box, giving the token access to possibly 2 million customers, and that FLiK would be involved in a number of entertainment deals.
The lawsuit claims these and other social media promotions were false, but caused the token value to increase to 30 cents by October 2017, an 800 percent increase over the ICO price.
"Investors in FLiK ate up the explosive series of announcements and promises," the lawsuit states.
In October 2017, however, the FLiK market crashed after a massive dump of the tokens, according to the lawsuit, which alleges that Felton blamed the crash on friends and family of T.I. selling massive amounts of the token all at once. As of today, the lawsuit says, the FLiK tokens have no market and are worthless.
Representatives for T.I. and Felton could not be reached for comment.