Former Theta executives have accused the company's CEO of fraud and retaliation

Two former executives of blockchain firm Theta Labs have filed a whistleblower lawsuit in California, accusing the company and its CEO, Mitch Liu, of years of fraud, market manipulation, and retaliation. Former executives Jerry Kowal and Andrea Berry have each filed lawsuits in Los Angeles Superior Court, accusing Liu of using Theta Labs and its parent company, Sliver VR Technologies, to inflate token prices through misleading collaborations and undisclosed insider token sales, while retaliating against employees who raised concerns.
Lawyers representing Jerry Kowal allege that Mitch Liu used Theta Labs as a personal trading tool to commit fraud, self-interested trading and market manipulation. Liu orchestrated a drive-up shipping scheme that repeatedly wiped out the value of investors and employees. Liu's alleged scheme also included "generating false offers for NFTs," some of which were linked to high-profile collaborations with celebrities such as Katy Perry. Berry's complaint also targets Theta's previous statements about Google, alleging that the company publicly misrepresented a regular Cloud as a Service agreement as a strategic partnership. The complaint also points to two other self-interest transactions, alleging that "Theta's alleged partners were in fact other companies founded and wholly owned by Liu."