A whistleblower website claimed that Kyle Roche — a crypto lawyer and a founding partner of the law firm Roche Freeman — was harassing multiple crypto companies.
After the accusation, Roche filed a request to resign from his role in several highly publicised lawsuits involving Tether, Bitfinex, the Tron Foundation, and HDR Global Trading (operating as BitMEX).
Said lawsuits alleged that the aforementioned crypto companies have defrauded retail customers.
The withdrawal happened just days after a series of videos got posted on Crypto Leaks. The videos seemed to show Roche gloating about exploiting the law to gather private information on crypto firms.
Additionally, the videos allegedly show Roche addressing the plaintiffs in the class-action lawsuits as “100,000 idiots”, and the jury members as “10 idiots.”
The crypto lawyer claimed that the videos are “illegally obtained, highly edited video clips that are not presented with accurate context.”
According to the Crypto Leaks article, Roche, who had previously been employed by Ava Labs — the firm responsible for Avalanche blockchain development — was also charged with filing baseless lawsuits against the rival companies of Avalanche. Both Ava Labs founder Emin Gün Sirer and the lawyer have refuted the accusations.
Roche would “withdraw as one of the attorneys for the Proposed Class”, and “is no longer involved” in his firm’s class action practice, according to the motion filed on Wednesday.
Roche has yet to file a withdrawal from representation in other class action lawsuits against Nexo, Dfinity, BAM Trading (Binance.US’s operator), Solana Labs, the Celsius Network bankruptcy case, or Block.one.
Furthermore, based on the court filings, the crypto lawyer still represents Emin Gün Sirer directly in several legal actions.
The class-action lawsuits, however, seem to have not been entirely dropped and are likely to continue, albeit without a named partner from the legal firm Roche Freedman.
