According to a press release found here, a Chapter 7 Trustee and a debtor company called With Purpose, Inc. d/b/a GloriFi, have filed a motion with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court to bring a Civil RICO Action on behalf of the debtor company to recover damages as described below:
The Trustee filed a motion for court approval of the joint prosecution agreement in the company's Chapter 7 bankruptcy proceedings, following a May lawsuit filed by WPI Collateral Management, LLC on behalf of GloriFi's secured creditors in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia. The 140-page complaint details allegations of defamation and intellectual property theft at the hands of Defendants Citadel, LLC, Peter Thiel, Vivek Ramaswamy, Joe Lonsdale, Nick Ayers, Rick Jackson, Keri Findley and other notable individuals who are accused of conspiring to gain control of GloriFi for their benefit. According to the lawsuit, the defendants launched a "blitzkrieg" campaign to make the company uninvestable for anyone but themselves, while forming and/or investing in competitive companies. The lawsuit further outlines the alleged actions that ultimately resulted in GloriFi's closure in 2022.
A Civil RICO action if successful can recover not just the damages suffered by the victim of wrongful conduct, but it also comes with trebled damages as an additional penalty for engaging in that conduct. The numbers involved here are pretty big, as the press release goes on to relate:
At the time of its closure, the unicorn company had on file with the Securities and Exchange Commission a merger agreement with DHC Acquisition Corp, a Nasdaq listed company, valuing it at $1.65 Billion.
If you don’t recall, GloriFi was supposed to be a financial institution for the “Anti-Woke” folks, i.e., that uncle of yours who babbles on about the War On Christmas and spends an extraordinary amount of time speculating about what goes on in bathrooms.
Any recovery through this action would go to secured creditors of GloriFi. This is sort of a mixed blessing because probably at least some of them were probably far right wingnuts themselves. So, at the end of the day, this might be characterized as the far right wingnuts feeding on themselves. Similarly, if the action is successful, it would probably also add fuel to potential other civil litigation outside of the bankruptcy that might be brought by the investors of GloriFi who were probably far right wingnuts themselves and against against Thiel, Ramaswamy, et al. (if such litigation has not been brought already).
So, this is all about far right wingnuts suing other far right wingnuts. I don’t have a problem with that.
I would also point out that folks involved with Trump always seem to themselves sooner or later end up in stories that involve the U.S. Bankruptcy Court.
I don’t have a problem with that either.
