August 2022

Celsius Customers Feel Betrayed As Bankruptcy Swallows Assets. Here’s How To Manage Crypto Risk

KEY POINTS

  • Celsius customers are hoping heartfelt letters will convince the bankruptcy courts to return their money
  • Crypto platforms do not have FDIC insurance or the other protections offered by bank accounts
  • Always read the terms and conditions before you commit money to a crypto platform and only invest money you can afford to lose

Celsius, the crypto lending platform that collapsed over the summer, owes $4.7 billion, according to its bankruptcy filing. That’s a lot of money. For some retail investors, it was their life savings. For others, it was money they wanted to put towards a house deposit or use to fund their retirement. They trusted Celsius and believed it was a safe alternative to a savings account.

Then Celsius froze withdrawals in June, and that trust was destroyed. Many customers are grappling with the possibility that they could lose their money altogether. Celsius owes about $1.2 billion more than it holds, and retail investors will be low down on the pecking order when it comes to recovering funds. It’s now in the hands of the bankruptcy courts who need to decide who gets what.

Celsius customers fight for their life savings

One big issue for Celsius

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August 20, 2022 by ATTORNEY

Jury selection begins Thursday in Alex Jones’ CT Sandy Hook trial

NEWTOWN — Just days after a Texas jury decided Alex Jones should pay $49.2 million in defamation damages to parents of a slain Sandy Hook boy, a new trial for other families Jones defamed will begin in Waterbury on Thursday with jury selection.

News that jury selection will begin in a trial that will determine how much Jones should pay eight Sandy Hook families and an FBI agent he defamed comes one day after a federal judge in Bridgeport stripped Jones of protection he was seeking when he put the parent company of his conspiracy merchandising platform Infowars into bankruptcy.

At stake is the future of Jones as the face of America’s conspiracy community and the fate of 15 people Jones defamed when he called the 2012 shooting of 20 first-graders and six educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School “staged,” “synthetic,” “manufactured,” “a giant hoax,” and “completely fake with actors.”

“I am looking forward to taking this to the jury,” said Norm Pattis, a high-profile New Haven attorney who is running Jones’ defense in Connecticut. “We have heard what the plaintiff’s have had to say about this case ad nauseam, and now we want to hear what the jury says.”

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August 19, 2022 by ATTORNEY

Sandy Hook parents seek to stop InfoWars bankruptcy payments to Alex Jones

By Dietrich Knauth

(Reuters) – Parents of children killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook school massacre urged a U.S. bankruptcy judge on Wednesday not to allow the parent company of far-right website InfoWars to send any money to its founder, conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, or his companies until they have an opportunity to get to the bottom of InfoWars’ finances.

As a jury deliberates in Austin, Texas, over how much Jones must pay two parents for his false claims that the deadly shooting was a hoax, families of Sandy Hook victims who have sued Jones for defamation in that trial and others who have sued in Connecticut warned a bankruptcy judge in Houston that Jones might continue to pull assets from InfoWars parent company Free Speech Systems LLC while using its bankruptcy case to avoid paying court judgments in the defamation cases.

Marty Brimmage, an attorney for the Sandy Hook parents, told U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Lopez in Houston on Wednesday that Jones had told his audience that the bankruptcy would “tie up” any defamation judgment for years.

Judges in the Texas and Connecticut cases have already found Jones liable for defamation. The parents in the Texas trial are seeking

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August 14, 2022 by ATTORNEY

3M earplug bankruptcy creates “corrosive” tension with other courts, attorney says

The 3M logo is seen at its global headquarters in Maplewood, Minnesota. REUTERS/Nicholas Pfosi

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(Reuters) – A 3M Co subsidiary on Wednesday criticized the way federal courts have handled 290,000 consolidated lawsuits over allegedly defective earplugs it made for the U.S. military, saying that the “broken” legal system allowed claims to balloon and threatened the company’s ability to settle them.

3M subsidiary Aearo Technologies LLC pressed for, but did not get, a court order that would protect its parent company from the lawsuits at its first hearing in U.S. bankruptcy court in Indianapolis. Instead, it reached a more limited agreement with plaintiffs to pause work for three weeks, interrupting witness depositions and expert reports scheduled in the lawsuits, which have been consolidated in the largest-ever multidistrict litigation (MDL) in U.S. court.

Plaintiffs sued Aearo and 3M over the company’s Combat Arms Earplugs version 2 (CAEv2), claiming they are defective and damaged their hearing. The cases ballooned to a peak of more than 290,000 last year and now account for nearly one-third of all cases pending in all federal courts, according to a court filing.

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August 12, 2022 by ATTORNEY

Alex Jones company files for bankruptcy; Sandy Hook defamation trial expected to continue

AUSTIN, Texas – Free Speech Systems, the main company owned by Austin-based conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, has filed for bankruptcy – but a Jones lawyer said the action is not expected to affect a trial underway in Austin in a lawsuit by the parents of a child killed in the 2012 attack on Sandy Hook Elementary School.

Free Speech Systems, which operates Jones’ InfoWars media system, listed $14.3 million in assets, including almost $1.16 million in cash and almost $1.6 million in property and equipment, as of May 31.

But the Austin corporation’s bankruptcy filing also listed $79 million in liabilities, including a $54 million debt owed to PQPR Holdings.

Video: Sandy Hook conspiracist Alex Jones could owe $150 million in defamation case 

A separate lawsuit filed by two Sandy Hook families earlier this year in state court accused Jones of systematically hiding millions of dollars in assets and called the $54 million debt dubious, saying PQPR is a Nevada-registered company that is owned “directly or indirectly by Jones, his parents and his children through an alphabet soup of shell entities.” That lawsuit is still in the early stages.

Alex Jones walks into the courtroom in front of Scarlett Lewis and Neil Heslin, the parents of 6-year-old Sandy Hook shooting victim Jesse Lewis, at the Travis County Courthouse Wednesday, July 27, 2022.

Alex Jones walks into the courtroom in front of Scarlett

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August 11, 2022 by ATTORNEY
August 2022
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