Cere Network co-founders and board members sued for $100 million over alleged token issuance fraud

BlockBeats News, January 29 — The decentralized data cloud platform Cere Network is once again embroiled in a legal dispute. According to the latest complaint filed with the San Francisco Federal Court, Cere co-founder Fred Jin, his family, and board members are accused of implementing a “pump-and-dump” scheme during the 2021 token public offering, illegally misappropriating investor funds with a claimed amount of up to $100 million.

Plaintiff Vivian Liu states that she is both an employee and an investor in Cere. The complaint alleges that Jin promised that tokens for himself and early investors would be unlocked several months after launch, but in reality, Jin and his accomplices secretly sold over $41 million worth of CERE tokens on multiple exchanges immediately after the token went live, transferring the funds into personal wallets.

This is the second lawsuit Cere Network has faced this month. On January 13, another co-founder, Kenzi Wang, sued Jin and the board on behalf of the company in the Delaware Court of Chancery, accusing them of systematically embezzling over $58 million of company assets and concealing the actions through false accounting, shell entities, and wash trading.

The latest lawsuit also alleges that Jin collaborated with market maker Gotbit, which has been convicted of market manipulation, to use bots for wash trading to cover up fraudulent activities. Currently, the CERE token price has fallen approximately 99.9% from its peak in November 2021. Cere Network and Fred Jin have not yet responded to the allegations.