Meteora co-founder filed with new lawsuit over token fraud linked to Trump, Milei

Revised lawsuit alleges Chow’s group used popular names to lure investors into Solana-based pump-and-dump schemes.

Benjamin Chow, a well-known crypto developer and co-founder of the decentralized Meteora exchange on Solana, is believed to be the driving force behind a scheme to defraud investors through 15 different token schemes.

A revised version of a class action lawsuit first filed in a New York federal court on April 21, 2025, says Chow, Meteora and Kelsier Ventures, a company run by Hayden Davis and some of his family members, used the names of famous people such as US First Lady Melania Trump and Argentine President Javier Milei to give credibility to coordinated scam designed to milk money from unwitting crypto investors.

Mechanics of the alleged scheme

The first complaint accused Chow, Meteora and members of the Davis family of lying to crypto investors. It said they made money at the expense of the public by manipulating the price of a Solana-based token called M3M3, as much as 95% of whose supply was controlled by a group of insiders.

The changed document is now claiming that fraud may have occurred involving as many as 15 cryptocurrencies, including the controversial MELANIA and LIBRA meme coins, which were promoted by Mrs. Trump and President Milei respectively. This information allegedly came from private messages shared by a whistleblower, in which Davis allegedly admitted to conducting “at least fifteen token launches at Chow’s direction.”

Prosecutors say Chow and the other defendants borrowed “credibility” from public figures and used it as “window dressing” to make their plans appear more legitimate. For this reason, they do not hold Melania or Milei responsible; instead, they focus on Meteora, its co-founder, and Kelsier’s management.

The new filing alleges that the alleged plot was carried out in a highly organized manner, with each participant playing a clear role. Chow would be in charge of the technical side due to his “unique knowledge of the code and ability to manipulate liquidity, fee routing and supply controls.” As such, the complainants say it was possible for him to control the supply and prices of the new tokens, creating situations where their values ​​could be artificially inflated and then collapse without the knowledge of ordinary traders.

On the marketing side, the lawsuit points to Kelsier Ventures, where Hayden, Charles and Gideon Davis used paid influencers and social media campaigns to make it seem like there was real public demand for meme coins like MELANIA and LIBRA. The group reportedly used the same formula for all 15 tokens: they created artificial scarcity, flooded the internet with paid promotions, and when prices rose, the insiders sold all their holdings at once, reducing the value of the asset and leaving other investors with huge losses.

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A pattern of denial and mounting evidence

According to the lawsuit, after the LIBRA token crashed in February 2025, Meteora pretended to blacklist Kelsier, a move that plaintiffs called “performative.” Chow and members of the Meteora leadership are said to have provided sworn statements describing themselves as “passive developers of autonomous software,” suggesting they had nothing to do with the price behavior of the crypto assets in question.

The programmer left Meteora in February and continued to maintain his innocence, but data from blockchain analytics companies like Bubblemaps tells a different story. Their February 17, 2025 report tracked wallet addresses that clearly showed the financial ties between those who created MELANIA and LIBRA, while revealing insiders made over $100 million in profits.