Busy crypto business Digital Currency Group (DCG) has hired top white-collar defense attorney Barry Burke.
Bloomberg first reported Wednesday that Burke will defend DCG against a civil suit filed last month by New York Attorney General Leticia James.
“This false and frivolous lawsuit proves the adage that ‘no good deed goes unpunished,'” Burke said in a press release. DCG It completely disregards and misrepresents the good faith efforts of the branch office, their customers and the industry as a whole.
Burke is co-chair of the white-collar defense and SEC regulatory practice at Kramer Levin Naftaliz & Frankel. He has worked on high-profile cases, including building the framework to impeach former President Donald Trump.
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Meanwhile, in the same press release, DCG founder and CEO Barry Silbert said he's confident Berk's experience will be of great help to the company's “firm commitment to fighting these baseless allegations.”
With around 200 companies in its portfolio, including Greyscale, the firm behind the Greyscale Bitcoin Trust, DCG is one of the largest players in the crypto industry.
But it has been mired in legal trouble since last year, when the entire industry was turned upside down following the bankruptcy of digital asset project Terra and crypto exchange megabrand FTX.
Last month, the New York attorney general's office hit DCG, a subsidiary of Genesis Global Capital, and crypto exchange Gemini Trust with charges. The companies committed a crime of defrauding their customers of $1.1 billion.
The three “cryptocurrency companies lied to investors and attempted to conceal more than $1 billion in losses, resulting in middle-income investors being the victims,” the lawsuit alleges.
DCG's other woes include the collapse of digital asset lender Genesis Global, which announced last month that it would cease all operations.
