Believe founder faces criminal charges amid investor class action

Key points:

• Believe founder Benjamin Pasternak has been arrested on criminal charges and is awaiting trial.
• Investors have filed a class action lawsuit, alleging misleading practices and financial losses.
• The main dispute centers on a token migration that allegedly diluted holdings and caused investor losses.

Benjamin Pasternak, the founder of Believe, is now at the center of a criminal case. He has been charged with two counts of assault. Pasternak has pleaded not guilty, and his next court hearing is scheduled for June 11.

The arrest adds to a growing list of challenges for Believe, a Solana-based SocialFi platform. The app allows users to launch and trade tokens tied to influencers, as well as create tokens through posts on X. Based on available information, the criminal case is not directly related to the ongoing civil claims against the project.

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At the same time, Believe is facing a class action lawsuit filed on March 23 in federal court in New York. The defendants include Pasternak, B24, Inc., and the Believe Foundation.

The case was brought by investors Joshua Lee and Pierre Montmias on behalf of holders of PASTERNAK, LAUNCHCOIN, and BELIEVE tokens. The plaintiffs claim they suffered losses due to misleading actions by the project team.

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According to the investigation, the app served as a tool for laundering criminal proceeds.

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According to the filing, Pasternak launched his token in January 2025 on a platform called Clout, which was later rebranded as Believe. He reportedly claimed he did not hold any of the token, but later promoted a buyback plan funded by platform revenue, encouraging investors to hold their positions.

A key issue in the lawsuit is the token migration. In October 2025, the team announced a transition from LAUNCHCOIN to a new token, BELIEVE. Plaintiffs argue that this move increased the total supply from 1 billion to more than 1.33 billion tokens, effectively diluting existing holders by about one-third.

The lawsuit also alleges that a portion of the newly issued tokens was allocated to insiders. Meanwhile, investors who failed to complete the migration lost their holdings, as those tokens were permanently burned. The complaint further states that around 40 million tokens from the foundation’s reserves were unlocked immediately.

In addition, plaintiffs claim that Pasternak stopped communicating after the migration and failed to provide any explanation. They argue that similar token schemes may have been repeated multiple times under different names.