A US-based law firm has filed a barrage of class-action lawsuits against some well-known companies in the crypto industry. Some of the companies involved in this lawsuit include, Binance, Block.one, Bitmex, and Tron, among others.

According to the report, the eleven suits were filed on last Friday by the New York firm, Roche Cyrulnik Freedom. The plaintiffs included Chase Williams, Alexander Clifford, William Zhang and Eric Lee. They allege that the firms involved in the suit defrauded investors by selling unlawful securities in the form of digital tokens.

The lawsuits mentioned 42 defendants in about 16 countries including, USA, British Virgin Islands, Canada, Cayman Islands, China, Estonia, Hong Kong, Israel, Japan, Malta, Seychelles, Singapore, South Africa, Switzerland, Taiwan, and Vietnam.

Notably, Roche Cyrulnik Freedom is the same firm behind the Bitfinex market manipulation suit in October 2019. It also represents the Kleiman estate in its billion-dollar lawsuit against self-professed Bitcoin inventor, Craig Wright.

Per the report, all the eleven lawsuits were filed in the US District Court for the Southern District Court of New York, and had a common theme. All of them allege that the token issuers sold illegal securities to US citizens. They claim the issuers took advantage of the investors’ lack of understanding and awareness of how cryptocurrencies work.

The lawsuits alleged that the defendants pitched their tokens as so-called utility tokens, which they claimed did not need to be registered as securities. According to the suits, it wasn’t apparent to the investors that these tokens needed to be registered with the US SEC.

Furthermore, the suits claim that the tokens issued by the defendants fail the Howey Test, a key test for determining whether an asset is a security. The plaintiffs are seeking damages to be determined during trial.

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