The Ryan Pineda Class Action Lawsuit

Mike DeHaan: [0:00] What is going on, guys? Welcome to collecting keys. This is the Friday focus today, and I am Mike DeHaan here to do this short little tidbit episode for you on this fine Friday. So on these episodes, we typically dive into a question from a listener or some kind of topic that we're excited about. And on this one, we're going to be doing a little bit of a breaking news kind of episode. Because something else that we also really like to do on the show is to call out and talk trash to different kinds of influencers, whether they are real estate influencers or they're business influencers, and just kind of expose the BS that they are all pretty much always shilling. I've yet to find people that really sort of like challenges. Actually, I got back. There's like maybe two that I can think of off top of my head that I really do think are legit. But most of the gurus out there that are just shilling whatever they think they can make money off of. And today, we had the honor of seeing Ryan Pineda's name come up in a class action lawsuit. And so what I wanna do is kinda just dive into that, kinda just, like, break down the full situation. Because after I reposted it on my Instagram at Mike underscore Invest, I got a ton of people that were kind of asking questions. And it's funny because they could just click on the link that I was getting it from. I'll share that in the show notes below if you wanna check it out.

Mike DeHaan: [1:13] But just kinda like dive into what exactly happened there, and why exactly he's in a lot of trouble. And it really makes you wonder how many other people like him are going to be facing the same kind of issues here in the near future. So first off, this whole situation came around from the whole NFT shill that he was running a couple of years ago. If you were listening to kind of business and real estate podcasts in the, you know, early twenty twenties, like the 2021, '22 kind of range, you heard a ton about NFTs, non fungible tokens. Right? And it seemed like every single influencer or, you know, kind of like thought leader, I would say, was talking about NFTs for a pretty extended period of time. And then people would try to come up with a use case for NFTs that they would then try to sell people. And wouldn't you know it, a lot of it turned into a bunch of BS. And Ryan Pineda's was no exception to that. Right? And interesting thing that's about his, and as we go into this, not only did he sell a ton of these NFTs and go through this whole thing, but he never even actually started the project. So it was legitimately just straight fraud. It wasn't even like a, oh, this NFT wasn't actually said it was. It just actually never even existed. And so diving into this, it starts with some real scathing remarks on him.

Mike DeHaan: [2:29] And as it says, this lawsuit is against snake oil salesman masquerading as entrepreneurs. The defendants led by ringleader Ryan Pineda sold digital assets that did not have the characteristics, uses, or benefits they advertised and promoted. Through malice, reckless incompetence, and greed, the defendants failed to provide the promised business ventures or digital rewards and proposed the purported purpose of defendant's endeavor may have been concealed by their scheme. Right? So basically saying, they're a bunch of scumbags, and they made up a bunch of BS. And so it goes into a lot of details of their NFTs that were called the Tykes, t y k e s NFTs, and kind of what they were promising with them. And so a lot of it was similar stuff that we heard at that period of time from other people. So it says upon purchasing a Tykes NFT, the holder was promised access to perks, which included access to exclusive real estate deals, vacation rental homes, events, educational products, and other investments. The more TAKE NFTs held, the more perks the holder was to receive. Additionally, the TAKE's were designed with an embedded yield generating mechanism that provided holders with a financial return in the form of a separate fungible cryptocurrency called TIE coin.

Mike DeHaan: [3:40] Specifically, by merely holding TIKEs NFTs, the owner passively accrued predetermined amount of Tyke coins over time. The more Tykes the more Tyke NFTs a single holder possessed, the greater the yield of the Tyke coins. The yield generating mechanism created an expectation of profit derived from the efforts of the Tykes NFT project as the value and distribution of the tokens was controlled by the project's underlying asset. And so if you think about this, right, here's what they were doing is they were creating something that the people that got in earlier when they were cheaper, were going to yield more because they could buy more of them. And as people bought more and more of them, there was less of them to go around, they became more expensive. And so the people who came in later yielded less from them. And so they were very quickly creating a pyramid scheme, because you're gonna have all of these people going out and telling all of their friends, they should also buy these tokens so they can generate more yield, and it's gonna drift up to them. Right? Because the more of them they get sold, the more yield they're gonna be getting. So at the initial sale, the defendants earned over $2,000,000 by selling the Tykes NFTs for thousands of dollars per piece.

Mike DeHaan: [4:51] Individuals purchased Tykes using either their regular credit cards or with Ethereum and established a regulated cryptocurrency. And so they made $2,000,000 when it launched. Who even knows how much they made after that? And then, however, it was only in February 2024. So they launched this in September 2022. February 2024, the truth is uncovered. The Tiges project was a fraud, and no meaningful development had ever taken place. The defendant's continuous misrepresentations were not mere delays, but a calculated effort to obscure their abandonment of the project. So all of this, they raised all this money. They sold $2,000,000 worth of September 2022. And then fast forwarding, like, eighteen months there, February 2024, they had not only done nothing with it, but they had basically just misled a ton of people into thinking that progress is being done, probably had fake milestones, fake reports, everything that they were sending out. And ultimately, this whole thing was just a giant bust, and they just stole all these people's money. Right? The crazy thing to me with this is, like, I I don't know. I guess I'm I'm kind of ignorant to NFTs. Like, how did the transfers happen? Were they must have literally just been, like, wiping like a a Stripe card for Ryan Pineda's company or sending Ethereum to a wall that they controlled. But I would have assumed, since people that were doing NFTs legitimately, it would be done through a marketplace where you would go and you buy the NFT and you would have it immediately. So this must have been like a pre raise or something. But either way, stole over $2,000,000.

Mike DeHaan: [6:15] And then it starts to it has a list of the the parties that are trying to basically file this lawsuit. And some of the, like, spends that these guys had were crazy. Some of these guys, like, $74,000 worth of NFTs they were trying to buy. $47,500. Just wondering if can hear, it's like 215,000. $221,000 a guy spent. These people were putting their life savings into their hero, their guru that was telling them that they had this great business opportunity. And this is, you know, just Ryan Pineda that's he's kind of the first, like, would say, super high profile one to get caught with this. But if you go back in time to them, this was everywhere. Right? There were so many different versions of this that were happening. There was the NFT thing that was all over the place that was obviously super fraudulent. There was the ecom stores, like the automated amazonecom stores that were everywhere. If you've been on social media, like business social media, all over the last number of years. I'm sure you saw those. Those were all a giant scam. And the crazy thing is is, like, this is the only one that we're hearing about. This has to be happening more and more. You gotta wonder how many of these guys are going down. And you can, like, hear some of these things, and you can wonder, like, I don't know why anyone fell for this, but that's not the point.

Mike DeHaan: [7:27] Right? They have someone that has gone and built a lot of trust and has a big audience, and you have these people that are kind of ignorant to how business and making money works. And so now they're being told that this is their chance to do the next big get rich quick opportunity. Right? And it's tales old as time. People jump into that. People make impulse decisions. People make dumb decisions. You don't even need that many people to believe you to make a ton of money. And so I imagine more people will be following suit with this. And this is like probably one of the least bad things that Ryan Payne has done over the last number of years. His ecommerce store scam is like significantly worse, you wanna dive into that. It was the Lunar Ecom whole fiasco. You can find YouTube videos and stuff on that, but that's a major scam. He's gonna be getting into big trouble with that. And these guys are just gonna be going down, man. I don't know what's gonna happen, like, as as all these sort of gurus come upended. And it as somebody that has a platform and creates content, it's really unfortunate because these are the guys that get so many eyes, and this is seems to be the outcome, like, more often than not. You know, it's a real shame. But, you know, the big red flags that you can look out for is if people are ever creating, like, scarcity over a once in a lifetime opportunity that you have to give them money in order to get access to, that's a huge red flag.

Mike DeHaan: [8:44] Something that Ryan Pineda was renowned for, which is also a huge red flag. Sorry, you listeners that are religious out there. But if people are really touting God and religion as a part of their platform, and they make it kind of like a centerpiece of it, I'm sorry, but that is a huge red flag if they're trying to sell you something at the same time that should be concerning to you. And then also to look at, like, their actual track record of what they are currently doing. And if they are, like, jumping around through different things constantly, like, quarter, every six months, or even every year, that is a red flag as well, because that means they're trying to find the next thing to sell you. You know, for people like Pace Morby, who I've talked a lot of trash on, the one thing I will give him a lot of credit for is he has committed heavily to sub two, and he does bring value to people with that education. Kinda does it at a little bit of a sketchy way that I don't like. But there's so many people out here. Ryan Pineda, the highs. You gotta look for him. You'll know him when you see him, and it's really, really problematic. So I'll post the link for this. You wanna read more about it in the show notes. If you have any experience with this, I'd love to hear your opinion on the full situation. You can send me a DM at Mike underscore Invest.

Mike DeHaan: [9:50] And let me know if you were involved. I would love to talk to you about it. I'm just fascinated. And if you have any more insights on kinda what unfolded here, definitely let me know. So send me a DM on Instagram at Mike underscore Invest. Thanks for listening. I'll talk to you guys next week.