Gate News message, April 23 — Benjamin Pasternak, 26-year-old founder of the Solana-based SocialFi platform Believe, was arrested on Tuesday (April 22) on charges of second-degree strangulation and two counts of third-degree assault with intent to cause physical injury, according to New York Criminal Court records. The incident occurred on March 31. Pasternak has pleaded not guilty and is scheduled to appear in court on June 11.
The arrest comes amid a class-action lawsuit filed on March 23 alleging that Pasternak and his team orchestrated a rug pull. The complaint claims the team forced a migration from the original token Launchcoin to a new token called Believe in October 2025, creating 333 million new tokens for insiders and diluting existing holdings by approximately one-third. Tokens of users who did not migrate were destroyed. The lawsuit alleges Pasternak disappeared after the forced migration without providing updates to investors, and claims he “ran the same play three times, under three different token names: generate excitement, bring consumers in, collect fees, and let the token collapse.”
Data shows the platform’s native token has plummeted 99.7% since its May 2025 peak, now trading at $0.0007009 and down 24% in the past 24 hours. It remains unclear whether Pasternak’s arrest is directly related to the ongoing civil lawsuit.
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