Leakers Allege Ava Labs Used ‘Gangster Style’ Legal Tactics to Screw Competing Crypto Companies

The whistleblowers claim that all these lawsuits gave their attorney access to company data granted by discovery, a pre-trial process by which plaintiffs and defendants in a lawsuit know what evidence the other side will present during a trial, to gain access to competitors “investors, contractual agreements with partners, customer lists,” internal communications, and more. They base this allegation on more hidden camera video where Roche says: “I sue half the companies in this space, I know where this market is going… I’ve seen the insides of every single crypto company.”

Class action lawsuits are a common aspect of the crypto industry, as is the case for any financial-based institution when things aren’t going swimmingly. The struggling exchange Coinbase was hit with four separate class action attempts this past month alone. But Roche has been at the head of several large-scale class actions, including one filed against Binance back in June that gained sweeping news coverage online. The law firm has said it is planning similar claims against other exchanges like Coinbase, Kraken, and Gemini. Video reportedly shows Roche saying he can sue “for the sport of it,” thanks to his deal with Ava Labs, and he never uses their name in any of his suits.

Otherwise, these lawsuits against competitors have kept the eyes of agencies like the Securities and Exchange Commission off Avalanche by creating “other magnets,” for their attention through these lawsuits. Because of his work, “there’s no such thing as regulation for what they want to do.”

The Attorney Claims It’s All a Hit Job from a Crypto Competitor

In response to a request for comment, Roche directed Gizmodo to a blog post he posted Monday morning in response to the anonymous report. He alleges these videos were recorded during private meetings with Christen Ager-Hanssen, a Norwegian venture capitalist. He said Ager-Hanssen came to him to talk up an investment in a technology startup, but that he was actually there “to deceive and entrap me… using a deliberate scheme to intoxicate and then exploit me using leading questions.”

Other than getting Roche drunk and loose-lipped, he further claimed there is no pact between his firm and Ava Labs, and that their work with Ava is “focused on defense side cases typical of any large corporation. Ava Labs has had no input, control, or insight into any of our firm’s plaintiff-side class action cases and we have never filed a class action on their behalf or at their request.” He further says that their plaintiff side practice has “remained a source of disagreement” with Ava, and that the crypto company has complained about those cases.

What makes this even more crazy is that Roche claims Ager-Hanssen was working on behalf of Ava competitor Dominic Williams, the founder of the nonprofit Dfinity Foundation and creator of the ICP token. We reached back to ask if Roche had any data to back up these specific claims against Williams or Ager-Hanssen, but we did not immediately hear back.

Williams tweeted about the report when it was first released complaining about a previous lawsuit filed by Roche Freedman against his foundation. CryptoLeaks’ previous report calling Akham and The New York Time’s ICP report false and “corrupt” was published a few weeks before Dfinity sued the paper and Arkham for defamation.

We reached out to Ager-Hanssen through his UK-based venture capital company Custos, but we did not immediately hear back. Dfinity did not immediately respond to a request for comment as well.

In a tweet, Ava CEO Sirer called all this “conspiracy theory nonsense.”

The report uses more than a little conjecture and assumption to attack Roche and the Avalanche developers, even beyond the already firm statements made by Roche in the hidden camera video. The whistleblowers attack Roche for his LinkedIn account listing the New York City area as his location even though he’s now based in Miami after moving “for tax purposes,” according to leaked video. Of course, not updating one’s LinkedIn isn’t a crime or some evidence for cover up, though his page does not list his affiliation with Ava Labs, which the report denotes is evidence that Roche Freedman tries to pretend they’re not affiliated with the Avalanche devs all while hurting competitors. Roche said in the video that he moved into a co-working space with Ava Labs back in August, 2019 when he first formed his firm.

The self-cannibalizing nature of established, centralized crypto companies is well-documented. The implosion of Three Arrows Capital, a former crypto hedge fund, has led to big financial problems for multiple projects. As much as whistleblowers called for “an industry where not everything is smoke and mirrors, and where they can trust other people’s integrity,” the report’s been met with both skepticism and support. According to CoinDesk, Changpeng Zhao, the loose-lipped CEO of Binance, tweeted, then deleted, “This is wild. Not sure if this is true, but assuming the videos are not deep fake… And of course Binance was a target. We are not even a competitor.”