Bamboozled Billionaires Now Blame Big Law Too! Fenwick & West in Crypto Calamity! 🤯💸

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If the multiverse possessed a Bureau of Spectacularly Predictable Disasters in the “Crypto-We-Told-You-So” division, today’s star exhibit would be the freshly amended lawsuit by FTX customers against Fenwick & West, the august San Francisco law firm whose autograph once appeared under every questionable diagram that looked suspiciously like a very expensive tree under which money kept falling into someone else’s orchard.

Highly relevant cat banking meme

In essence, the erstwhile customers-who once referred to themselves as investors but now prefer the more evocative term “mugged”-have asked the court to update the complaint they flung at the courthouse wall last year to see what additional spaghetti might stick. And oh my, quite a bit has, including a full accessory kit of state securities claims popped fresh from California and Florida, where sunshine makes even moral rot gleam attractively.

Loose Lips, Encrypted Hips 👀

From the trial transcripts and bankruptcy debris field emerges a portrait of Fenwick as the legal equivalent of the helpful chap who ties your shoelaces so you can run faster… straight over a very deep canyon. Plaintiffs say the firm helped craft:

  • Shell corporations so empty they made tumbleweeds look crowded
  • Mirage-like bank accounts that swallowed customer “deposits” and belched out personal “loans”
  • A discreet Signal group whose best feature was its ability to unsay yesterday-conveniently accelerating all copies of history toward the nearest shredder 🗑️✨

Former lieutenants Nishad Singh, Gary “Efficiency” Wang, and Caroline “Actually My Job Title Was CEO But Still Surprised by Everything” Ellison apparently queued up at the witness stand to insist that Fenwick was in the room, knew the scheme, and at times helpfully pointed out where the wallpaper might conceal a secret door. According to these not-very-swashbuckling pirates, the lawyers nodded gravely, then offered tips like “Make it look more like compliance” and “Perhaps add a fourth Cayman entity, anniversary edition.” 🏴‍☠️📜

Cat looking surprisingly judgemental about shell companies

An independent examiner-whose billing rate climbs in direct proportion to the amount of coffee required to read 200,000 documents-concluded that Fenwick’s bond with FTX management made conjoined twins look distant. Allegedly the relationship included:

  • Providing personal offshore scooters to scoot money around jurisdictions the way some people shuffle post-it notes
  • Sketching corporate labyrinths so intricate they came with complimentary minotaurs
  • Setting up autodeleting chats cleverly labelled “Definitely Not Evidence” 🤡

Fenwick Waves the Hokey-Cokey Defence 🕺

Back in September, the firm filed a motion to dismiss notable for the sheer bravado of its “nothing to see here, officer” choreography. The motion argued, in appropriately impenetrable legalese, that advising clients-however creatively-remains perfectly legal unless the client expressly says, “Please generate larceny, extra sprinkles.” Attorneys are historians, not prophets, and apparently it’s rude to mention that the bridge is on fire until after everyone has crossed.

Sam Bankman-Fried, meanwhile, testified that if the lawyers told him to jump off a fiscal cliff, he simply asked how many times and whether to file a Form 8-K afterward. Which is either an exquisitely measured respect for professional advice, or a perfectly choreographed legal dodge so circular it could qualify for the Olympics in synchronized deflection.

New Claims, Same Surprise 🍿

The freshly caffeinated complaint then sprinkles two bonus counts under Florida and California state securities statutes, claiming Fenwick essentially moonlighted as interior decorators for unregistered securities sold to residents of those sunshine-drenched precincts of litigation. Or as the filing says without even cracking a smile, “played an active role in designing, promoting, and facilitating…” Translation: the law firm wasn’t just near the oven when the soufflé of fraud rose-it allegedly supplied the whisk.

Cat lawyer reviewing red-string conspiracy board

None of this has yet passed a judge’s raised eyebrow, let alone a jury’s gimlet gaze. We are, after all, at that delicious stage of litigation where everybody is innocent, shocked, and definitely not the sort of people who would leave the seats up on a moral compass. The moral, if any, appears to be that when your business model involves making up money that is both everywhere and nowhere at once, asking the professionals to make it look tidy is merely adding a bow tie to a black hole. 🎀⚫

In short: more popcorn will be required. The universe has an overdraft facility, and the meter is still running.💰⏳

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2025-08-12 09:50