JPMorgan Chase has been sued by investors at Goliath Ventures, with a proposed class action alleging that the bank ignored “red flags” that the allegedly fraudulent crypto pool raised and helped enable what the complaint describes as a $328 million crypto Ponzi scheme that affected more than 2,000 people.
Filed Wednesday in federal court for the Northern District of California, the complaint claims that Chase “provided the essential banking infrastructure through which the Ponzi scheme operated,” processing investor deposits, facilitating transfers and enabling payments that allegedly “created a false appearance of legitimate profits.”
Florida resident Christopher Alexander Delgado was arrested last month by federal authorities on wire fraud and money laundering charges related to his operation of Goliath. This criminal case is still in its early stages.
“Numerous red flags made the fraudulent nature of the scheme obvious and known to Chase,” the class action proposed Wednesday alleges. “Despite these red flags, Chase turned a blind eye and continued to manage the accounts used to perpetrate the fraud, earning substantial fees from the hundreds of millions of dollars they washed through Goliath and Delgado’s banking activities at Chase.”
A JPMorgan spokesperson told CoinDesk that the bank would “decline to comment.”
The complaint, filed by Robby Alan Steele through his attorneys at Shaw Lewenz and co-counsel, states that JPMorgan was Goliath’s sole banking institution. It further states that around $253 million was deposited into a Chase account linked to Goliath between January 2023 and June 2025. Around $123 million was transferred from this account to crypto exchange Coinbase, while around $50 million was sent to investors as purported returns.
The lawsuit, which does not specify the precise amount of damages, repeatedly argued that the bank should have detected the alleged fraud solely from the flow of funds.
“From the bank’s perspective, the fraudulent scheme was obvious,” the complaint states. “A fraudulent scheme of this magnitude cannot be carried out surreptitiously by a single bank. »
The suit also mentions JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon’s public criticism of cryptocurrencies, adding that it contradicts the bank’s alleged conduct.
“Despite Dimon’s long history of criticizing cryptocurrency,” the complaint states, Chase “knowingly allowed a bank customer – Goliath – to commingle investors’ money at Chase” and use subsequent investors’ funds to pay off previous ones “in a classic Ponzi scheme.”
