How a Meme Coin Turned Investors into Unwilling Magicians of Disappearing Dough 🪄💸

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Once upon a recent time, in the curious land of Solana, there lived a cheeky little creature named Meteora. This wasn’t your ordinary marketplace; no, it fancied itself a clever little decentralized exchange where magic tokens danced about. Enter the star of the show: M3M3, a meme coin with a name as mysterious as a cabbage in a hat.

But oh dear—what mischief unfolded! A grand lawsuit plopped down like a splattered custard pie, accusing Meteora and its ringmaster, Benjamin Chow, of cooking up a pump-and-dump scheme juicy enough to make even the slyest fox twitch its tail. They say investors lost a whopping $69 million from December 2024 to February 2025, which, frankly, is enough to fund a small army of golden retrievers and endless ice cream.

Rug Pull Shenanigans: The Great Wallet Wizardry

Filed on April 21 (not a joke, despite the timing), brave plaintiffs marched into the U.S. District Court, pointing fingers at not only Meteora and Chow but also the shadowy Kelsier Labs and the mysterious Davis clan — Thomas, Hayden, and Gideon. Apparently, they played a sneaky game of keeping the public locked out like a bunch of kids outside a candy store, while they gobbled up 95% of the M3M3 tokens using more than 150 wallets. Talk about being wallet warriors!

“Together, these wily defendants pulled off the grand illusion of a public launch, but really kept the goodies for themselves and their favorite insiders,” the lawyers grumbled.

During this cloak-and-dagger twenty-minute spree, these merry tricksters juggled prices higher by trading tokens amongst themselves — like passing notes in class but with digital dough. After selling their shiny stash at the peak, the price collapsed faster than a house of cards in a windstorm, leaving everyone else staring at the ruins.

Not ones to give up, the defendants tried to blow fresh air into the token’s sails to bring back hope, but alas, the ship just kept leaking.

Oh, and did we mention they hid their secret identities so well that even Sherlock Holmes would tip his hat in baffled respect? The public was made to believe it was all as fair as a village bake sale.

Stake Your Coins, They Said. It’ll Be Fun, They Said.

Back in December 2024, Benjamin Chow was singing sweet songs about Meteora’s platform as the knight in shining armor against chaotic pump-and-dumps. M3M3 was touted as a safe, stake-backed token, promising long-term sparkle and staking rewards harvested from transaction fees — basically coin magic grown like a digital garden.

Investors were led to believe they’d join a luminous parade, with transparency so bright it would make the sun jealous.

But the suit paints a darker picture: a crafty masquerade where those promises were just shiny bubbles ready to burst. The petitioners now ask for the rulebook to be rewritten so folks can figure out if these stake-based meme coins like M3M3 should be treated as proper securities — which could throw a wrench into how any future celebrity or political coin parades onto Solana’s stage.

Meanwhile, in a nearby corner of this wacky crypto carnival, Kelsier Ventures, KIP Protocol, and meteoric Meteora are also tangled up in another class-action circus, all thanks to the LIBRA token’s spectacular fall from grace. Insiders allegedly danced away with the loot, leaving regular traders with empty pockets and heavy hearts.

As the curtain fell on this act, Chow decided to step down from his lead role at Meteora, under a rather suspicious cloud of insider trading whispers and a side of financial tomfoolery.

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2025-04-23 23:55