Rapper T.I. and a business partner are being sued by an international group of investors over an alleged $1.3 million cryptocurrency pump-and-dump scheme, according to court documents.

The rapper, whose full name is Clifford Joseph Harris Jr., and his partner are accused of using social media, celebrity endorsements and "well-known industry experts" to tout a cybercurrency called "FLiK," a token that was purportedly tied to a business company of the same name but which has proved to be worthless, according to a complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Atlanta last week.

The lawsuit, which seeks $5 million in damages, also claims that comedian Kevin Hart served as a "celebrity endorser" for FLiK, but he is not named as a defendant.

Listed as a defendant in the lawsuit along with T.I. is Ryan Felton, a Georgia resident who is described as an entertainment executive and, along with T.I., FLiK's controlling shareholder.

The 25 investors who filed the lawsuit claim the token plan was actually a pump-and-dump scheme, alleging that T.I. and Felton sold off their tokens after they used a social media campaign to temporarily drive the price of FLiK up from 6 cents to 21 cents.

After T.I. and Felton cashed in their tokens, the lawsuit says, "Felton stopped responding to the investors and, finally, when the investors realized that they had been duped, Felton created a new company ... to 'acquire' FLiK and speciously told investors that he had nothing to do with the new sham company."

The lawsuit claims that FLiK was pitched as an investment rather than as a digital currency and that it failed to get the necessary securities registrations.

"FLiK was able to avoid many regulatory checks because it collected the money in Bitcoin and other virtual currencies, which can be used as payment without going through any banks or other middlemen that might look into the legality of the transactions," the lawsuit states.

Felton told investors the token would increase in value from 6 cents to $14.99 in 15 months, for a return of 24,983 percent, the lawsuit says.

Instead, investors say, they lost original investments totaling about $1.3 million.

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.