Terra/Luna Fraud Case

N.D. Illinois

Court

1:23-cv-02921

Case number

On September 14, 2022, Bloomberg reported that a court in South Korea issued an arrest warrant for Do Kwon, the founder of the Terraform Labs cryptocurrency ecosystem, whose implosion earlier this year sparked a global crypto rout. Allegations include violations of the nation’s capital markets law.

Going back a few months, massive sales of UST and LUNA assets led to their collapse and the complete loss of funds by investors.

Terraform Labs described their tools like this: Pegging 1 UST to $1 is based on the concept of arbitrage and the Mint & Burn mechanism. The Terra protocol allows arbitrageurs to exchange each 1 UST issued for the corresponding $1 price of LUNA tokens. The company misled investors that the TerraUSD instrument (UST) was pegged to the US dollar at a ratio of 1 to 1. 
In April 2022 there were announced plans to buy at least $ 10 billion in bitcoin to provide financial support for the UST. 
Investors have been further misled by reports of increased investment security through insurance with Bitcoin reserves. 
On May 05, 2022, the non-profit Luna Foundation Guard announced the purchase of 37.863 thousand bitcoins for $1.5 billion, on which Luna quotes updated their highs. 
After major withdrawals through the Anchor Protocol on May 7-8, UST ceased to fulfill its function of reflecting the dollar exchange rate 1 to 1. According to the management of Luna Foundation Guard, on May 10 they used their reserves to support the coin. In fact, we can only say that the collateral from the LFG disappeared from its official wallet, the facts of the use of funds for protection were not provided. 
Ultimately, the value of UST and Luna coins fell to almost zero, and on May 13, the Binance exchange closed all trading pairs for these assets. Changpeng Zhao has publicly slammed Terraform Labs over its handling of Terra’s collapse: “I am very disappointed with how this UST/LUNA incident was handled (or not handled) by the Terra team. We requested their team to restore the network, burn the extra minted LUNA, and recover the UST peg. So far, we have not gotten any positive response or much response at all”. 

99% of funds were lost by investors for a total of $45 billion.

Case Status

Attorney Investigation

Alleged Offence

Mismanagement,

Misleading Statements,

Financial Misrepresentation,

Fraud,

Failure to Disclose,

Price manipulation,

Insider Trading,

Malpractice,

Negligence,

Breach of Fiduciary duty,

Omissions,

Other

Suspected Party

Directors,

Management,

Shareholder,

Influencer,

Investment Bank,

Service Provider,

Research Entity,

Hedge Fund

Security Type

Crypto Asset

Trade Direction

Long

Shock Event Date

14 September 2022

Filing date

09 May 2023

Terra/Luna Fraud Case

Collecting participants…