Silver Miller Files Class Action Lawsuit Against Crypto 'Festival'

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On May 7, 2020: David Silver of law-firm ‘Silver Miller’ filed a class action lawsuit in the district of Colorado against Jacob Kostecki as a result of failing to fulfil promises of full refunds to the parties represented by the plaintiff. Jacob Kostecki is the organiser and sole entity behind the ‘Massive Adoption Crypto Festival’, which was originally scheduled to take place on February 27-28th at the FedEx Institute of Technology in Memphis, Tennessee (pictured).

Massive Adoption Crypto Festival described itself as a “2-day TED talk style event” and claimed to be expecting around 1500 attendees and 60 speakers, including John Biggs (Coindesk editor), Anthony Pompliano (Morgan Creek), and more. This was before Kostecki officially announced the event’s cancellation on January 31, 2020 via his official Twitter account.

In the tweet thread which revealed this news: Kostecki referenced personal “cash flow” problems as a reason for cancelling the event, in addition to an ambiguous reference to “@RobMcNealy [having] shared some rightfully negative information about my background”. He also mentions “numerous cancellations” received from speakers, sponsors and attendees.

Kostecki acknowledged that people were owed refunds at the time, but over three months have elapsed now since the announcement. In this time, Kostecki has delivered a number of updates which reassure ticket-holders that refunds are being processed: including an update to the official website.

The final website update comprised a message dated April 30, 2020 in which Jacob Kostecki informally postponed refunds indefinitely with reference to the ongoing novel Coronavirus pandemic. It also redirected blame from himself for the events failure on previously undisclosed (and seemingly unrelated) circumstances such as “local conditions, global markets, and operator errors”.

Excuses Are Not Good Enough

Lawyer David Silver (Silver Miller), as well as many ticket holders, do not not believe that these promises are good enough, especially when the goalposts are moved multiple times. The lawsuit pushes for Jacob Kotsecki to sign an agreement that legally compels him to refund every ticket holder, as well as for Kotsecki to submit details of every individual ticket holder to court to ensure that they receive their money back.

Silver published his own series of tweets detailing specifics of the lawsuit, including one in which he explains the core issue at the heart of the case:

“Rather than demonstrate actual intent to resolve things, Mr. Kostecki constantly throws up excuses. His latest was reprehensible, claiming he will only address this "post Covid 19."

Silver Miller calls itself “a securities fraud and investment loss contingency-fee law firm” with extensive prior experience with cases concerning fraud and cryptocurrency. These include:

• Group action lawsuit against Kraken: pertaining to issues such as so-called “flash-crashes” and DDoS on numerous occasions. The issue was that these issues not only affected the value of tokens on the market, but also prevented users from being able to access their funds during market volatility which “caused tens of millions of dollars in damage”.
• Class action lawsuit against Coinbase: pending in the United States District Court.
• Class action lawsuit against BitConnect: notorious scandal where the defendant ‘exit scammed’ with user invested funds on January 17, 2018.

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