Gala Games Co-founders Wright Thurston and Eric Schiermeyer filed lawsuits against each other for $130M theft in a Utah District Court on August 31.
Gala Games, a startup focused on Web3 gaming and finance (GameFi), was founded by Thurston and Schiermeyer in early 2019. Both of them had equal ownership stakes of 50% each in the company.
CEO of Gala Games, Schiermeyer, has accused Thurston and his investment firm, True North United Investments, of stealing around $130 million worth of GALA tokens linked to the Gala Games ecosystem in early 2021.
According to Schiermeyer’s lawsuit, the GALA tokens were initially moved to a wallet controlled by the company. However, Thurston moved it to 43 other wallets. While being questioned, Thurston said he was keeping the tokens safe for GALA.
Thurston, in his lawsuit filed on August 31, claims that Schiermeyer seized control of Gala Games for his own benefit. Thurston adding to this stated that Schiermeyer used the company’s money to make personal purchases, like funding a private jet.
The lawsuit claims that “Thurston has already moved approximately half of the 8.6 billion stolen tokens, valued at approximately $130 million dollars at that time.”
In his lawsuit, Schiermeyer alleges Thurston “has founded numerous companies, most of which have ended up in litigation, insolvent, bankrupt, and/or sued by the SEC.”
In March 2023, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued Thurston and True North, alleging that Thurston defrauded purchases of “Green Boxes” by falsely representing that they mined an energy-efficient GREEN crypto token and also made other fraudulent representations.
Also Read: Investors File Lawsuit Against Atomic Wallet Over $100M Hack
