Garrison v. Bankman-Fried and the FTX promoter claims in the MDL

FTX promoters lawsuit status on 23 Oct 2026

The FTX promoters lawsuit began as Garrison v. Bankman-Fried, filed on 15 November 2022 in the Southern District of Florida, but its claims no longer move under that number. A transfer order dated 5 June 2023 sent the case to the multidistrict litigation In re FTX Cryptocurrency Exchange Collapse Litigation, No. 1:23-md-03076, before Judge K. Michael Moore. Two days later, on 7 June 2023, a paperless order (entry 226) stayed the Garrison case and closed it administratively for statistical purposes.

The multidistrict docket is active. Its newest entry retrieved, number 1163, is a clerk's notice of 14 October 2026. On the promoter claims, the entries retrieved show motions to dismiss still being briefed: the plaintiffs filed a notice of supplemental authority on 21 August 2026 (entry 1136) and the promoter defendants answered it on 27 August (entry 1137). No order deciding those motions was seen.

How the claims moved from the member case to the MDL

A multidistrict proceeding gathers related federal cases from different districts before one judge for pretrial work. The June 2023 transfer order, the first entry on the multidistrict docket, assigned the FTX cases to Judge Moore. His stay order on the Garrison docket says the case is a member case, tells the clerk to close it for statistical purposes "while the claims proceed under 1:23-md-03076-KMM", and keeps jurisdiction so that the case can be restored on a party's motion.

A stay is not a dismissal, and nothing was decided about the merits on 7 June 2023. On 6 and 7 June 2023, lawyers for Solomid Corporation, another defendant in the Garrison case, entered appearances on its docket (entries 218 to 221 and 227), the sort of housekeeping that follows a transfer.

What the consolidated promoter complaint alleges

Instead of litigating each filing separately, the multidistrict plaintiffs filed "administrative" class complaints grouped by type of defendant. On 8 August 2023 they filed one aimed at promoters and digital creators (entry 156), corrected on 11 August (entry 179), while separate complaints targeted FTX insiders, banks, law firms, auditors and venture investors. Edwin Garrison, who brought the original case, appears among the plaintiffs on later multidistrict filings, including the August 2026 notice.

Press coverage of the original Garrison complaint said it alleged that FTX's yield-bearing accounts were unregistered securities and that promoters helped sell them. Those are allegations from the pleadings. A court has not found that any promoter knew of a fraud or did anything wrong.

The May 2025 ruling and what followed

On 7 May 2025 Judge Moore entered an order granting in part and denying in part a set of motions to dismiss and denying a motion about service of process (entry 890). The order itself was not retrieved for this page. Reuters, republished by Business Insurance, reported that it dismissed 12 of 14 claims, that the plaintiffs had not shown the celebrities knew of the fraud, and that state securities-law claims under Florida and Oklahoma law survived.

The plaintiffs responded on 28 May 2025 with a first amended administrative class complaint against the promoters (entry 908), naming among others Thomas Brady, Gisele Bundchen, Stephen Curry, Lawrence Gene David, the Golden State Warriors and several corporate defendants. After an order of 28 July 2025 on their request for more time (entry 952), the Sports and Entertainment defendants, the court's label for the promoters and digital creators, moved to dismiss in late July 2025 (for example entries 947 and 948). The plaintiffs opposed (entry 977), and a later notice describes the motions as seeking dismissal or an order compelling arbitration.

On 16 April 2026 the promoter defendants filed a request for judicial notice (entry 1082), and on 23 April the plaintiffs answered with a cross-motion to strike (entry 1092).

Settlements in the multidistrict litigation

Other defendant groups have been resolving claims. On 22 May 2026 the plaintiffs moved for preliminary approval of a second group of settlements, with provisional certification of a settlement class (entry 1106). Bloomberg Law reported on 26 May 2026 that the group covers a law firm, an accounting firm and Udonis Haslem, a former NBA player named as a promoter, who agreed to pay $420,000. On 10 September 2026 the parties jointly asked for a status conference (entry 1142), and other parties filed papers about that request on 23 September (entries 1148 and 1150). No order approving the settlements was seen.

Not every promoter has settled. On 11 and 12 August 2026 a group of defendants, including Tom Brady, Stephen Curry, Shohei Ohtani and Naomi Osaka, filed notices reserving their rights about that settlement motion (entries 1132 and 1135).

Reading the two dockets

New activity appears on the multidistrict docket, not on the Garrison docket, whose last substantive entries date from 2023. The multidistrict docket runs past 1,100 numbered entries, so the promoter motions are best found by searching it for "Promoter". Wider context on how an individual named plaintiff can sit inside a larger case is in the class action explainer, and a different crypto-adjacent case, over NFTs rather than an exchange, is on the Yuga Labs lawsuit page. The tracker home page lists the rest.

The next event to watch is Judge Moore's decision on the promoter motions to dismiss, which the briefing through 3 September 2026 (entry 1141) has teed up.