“I was just a paid spokesperson”

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Shaquille O’Neal wants to make one thing clear: he doesn’t believe in cryptography, if he ever did.

This is after he was named in a class action lawsuit against bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX last month, for promoting the company in a June advertisement.

In an interview with CNBC Make It this week, the 50-year-old businessman and Basketball Hall of Famer answered questions about his relationship with FTX while discussing his other business plans.

O’Neal has a long history of investing in the businesses he promotes, including his current venture, Shaq’s Fun House, an annual half-festival, half-carnival event. Those investments play out often: O’Neal earns more on the court than he did as an NBA star, he told HBO’s “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel” in 2018.

But when it comes to FTX, he says, he was just a celebrity in a commercial.

“A lot of people think I’m involved, but I was just a paid spokesperson for a publicity,” O’Neal said.

FTX Collapse Traps Celebrity Investors

On Tuesday, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission accused FTX founder and former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried of orchestrating a “brazen” years-long fraud, misusing client funds for his own benefit. and its crypto hedge fund, Alameda Research.

Bankman-Fried was arrested by authorities in the Bahamas on Monday, which likely led to an extradition and trial in the United States, CNBC reported. He will face at least eight counts from federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York, including several counts of conspiracy and fraud.

Customers have not been able to withdraw funds from FTX since the company declared bankruptcy last month. According to an FTX bankruptcy filing, as many as a million creditors don’t know if they’ll ever get their money back.

The class action lawsuit against O’Neal is a separate legal proceeding from the federal government charges. He alleges that FTX spokespersons “controlled, promoted, helped [or] actively participated” in a conspiracy to “aggressively market” the company.

Other athletes and celebrities from FTX commercials, including Steph Curry, Tom Brady and comedian Larry David, have also been named in the lawsuit. Texas is now separately investigating some famous FTX endorsers for potential violations of state securities laws, according to Bloomberg.

‘I don’t understand [crypto]so I’ll probably stay away’

The ex-basketball star’s ad was somewhat surprising: Last year, O’Neal told CNBC Make It that he was actively avoiding cryptocurrency.

“I don’t understand it, so I’ll probably stay away until I fully understand what it is,” he said, adding, “In my experience, it’s Too good to be true.”

O’Neal told Front Office Sports last year that he had turned down promotional offers from various crypto entities.

“I always get these companies saying, ‘Hey, we’ll give you $900,000 in crypto to tweet,'” O’Neal said. “So I have to say, ‘OK, if you’re going to give me a million dollars worth of crypto, then why do you need me?'”

He may have changed his mind at the end of 2021, though: Over the past year, O’Neal changed his Twitter display name to “SHAQ.ETH” and “SHAQ.SOL” to promote NFT collections. backed by Ethereum and Solana cryptocurrency. platforms.

“I’m thrilled to partner with FTX to help make crypto accessible to everyone,” O’Neal said in the June ad. ” I completely agree. And you? »

Today, O’Neal cites his friendship with Curry as the reason he agreed to appear in the ad. A spokesperson for Curry declined to comment.

In the ad, O’Neal told viewers that he checks his FTX account daily. But when asked now if he’s bullish on crypto, he offers a simple answer: “No.”

“People know I’m very, very honest,” O’Neal said. “I have nothing to hide. If I was heavily involved, I would be front and center saying, ‘Hey’. But I was just a paid spokesperson.”

It’s unclear how much money O’Neal made from his FTX endorsement deal. Investor and entrepreneur Kevin O’Leary, who has also backed FTX and is named in the lawsuit, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” last week that he was paid $15 million by FTX and that he had lost everything: $9.7 million he had invested with FTX, over $1 million in FTX equity, and approximately $4 million in taxes and agent fees.

O’Leary said the money he lost was his. “We need to get to the bottom of what happened at FTX, but we can’t let its collapse cause us to abandon the great promise and potential of crypto,” he told the committee on Wednesday. Senate of Banks.

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