FaZe Clan has removed Kay from the organization, and has suspended Jarvis, Teeqo, and Nikan “until further notice” following an alleged scam that centers around ‘pumping and dumping’ various cryptocurrency ‘altcoins.’
Matt Binder of Mashable first chronicled the practice of influencers promoting and then quickly deleting or going back on promoting various ads for new cryptocurrencies. Specifically, Binder reported FaZe Banks and FaZe Kay’s promotion of “BankSocial,” with a now-deleted tweet from FaZe Banks.
“This is a project I fuck with heavily and truly believe it’s the next one to pop. $10,000 winner chosen at random in 24 hours. Good luck you sexy fucks. #BSOCIAL (not financial advice lol),” Banks tweeted.
As part of the ‘pump and dump’ scheme, influencers promote an altcoin, which causes the price of the altcoin to shoot up. The person paid to promote the coin then typically sells a massive amount of the coin while it’s at its peak, netting the influencer a significant amount of money and potentially causing the value of the coin to crash.
Binder subsequently reported that Banks was paid to be an ambassador for the program and that he allegedly backed out of his promotion contract with BankSocial after the initial tweet, citing a loophole. Banks’ pay for promoting BankSocial wasn’t paid in the BankSocial coin, so his advertisement didn’t boost his take-home pay.
Kay’s level of involvement is still up in the air, as he responded to Banks’ original tweet, saying that he was up two times the amount he had put in already. Banks claimed on Twitter that he’s still holding onto his BankSocial coin, and that he has yet to sell one dollar of it.
Banks was responding to YouTube user “CoffeeZilla”, who chronicled members of FaZe Clan allegedly pumping and dumping a coin called “savethekids.io”. CoffeeZilla’s video implicated Teeqo, Jarvis, and Nikan.
On June 27, Kay posted a tweet that read “I want you all to know that I had no ill intent promoting any crypto alt coins. I honestly & naively thought we all had a chance to win which just isn’t the case. I didn’t vet any of this with my team at FaZe and I now know I should have.”