NBA

After dodging it for months, Shaquille O’Neal finally gets served over FTX lawsuit at Game 4 of Celtics-Heat

The 15-time All-Star, who spent one season with the Celtics, was a spokesperson for FTX, which is involved in a fraud case after founder Sam Bankman-Fried was arrested and the company fell apart.

Shaquille O'Neal was on site for Game 4, a Celtics win.

By Katie McInerney, The Boston Globe

May 25, 2023

The law comes for all of us.

For months, former NBA star and “Inside the NBA” host Shaquille O’Neal has been dodging process servers attempting to notify him that he is being sued in a class-action filing by people who invested in the failed cryptocurrency company FTX.

The 15-time All-Star, who spent one season with the Celtics, was a spokesperson for FTX, which is involved in a fraud case after founder Sam Bankman-Fried was arrested and the company fell apart.

O’Neal is not the only notable name to be swept up in the collapse of the cryptocurrency company.

Tom Brady and his ex-wife Gisele Bündchen, MLB star Shohei Ohtani, tennis star Naomi Osaki, and Warriors guard Stephen Curry have all been named in the class-action lawsuit filed by investors. The suit claims the stars “lured unsophisticated investors and cost them their fortunes,” per the Washington Post.

But O’Neal apparently was the hardest to track down.

The Post reported O’Neal had been followed through multiple states, tracked down at TNT’s Atlanta studio, and even had papers thrown at him while in a moving car. An attorney told the Post it cost than $100,000 to try to reach the big man. O’Neal, of course, is not hard to spot — he’s 7-foot-1.

“I haven’t heard of anything like this in 30 years,” Adam Moskowitz, an attorney representing the group of investors, told the Post. “This is a defendant who’s well-known. He’s not fleeing another island. He’s in America, and he’s on TV every day — but we can’t get near him and serve him. It’s insane.”

Until now.

O’Neal was finally served during Tuesday’s Heat-Celtics game, for which he was on site as part of his analyst coverage for TNT. O’Neal, Charles Barkley, Kenny Smith, and Ernie Johnson sat at a desk right in the middle of the action, on the lower-level of the arena, for all of their television appearances during the Celtics’ win. O’Neal reportedly got the process server kicked out of the arena, but the incident was captured on video.

O’Neal was served the papers at Miami’s Kayesa Center … formerly known as FTX Arena.

“It was a bit of poetic justice,” said Moskowitz told the Post.