JPMorgan Chase has been sued by Goliath Ventures investors, with a proposed class action lawsuit alleging that the bank ignored “red flags” raised by the allegedly fraudulent cryptocurrency group and helped enable what the complaint describes as a $328 million cryptocurrency Ponzi scheme that affected more than 2,000 people.
Filed Wednesday in federal court in 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 the 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 Goliath operation. That criminal case is in its early stages.
“Numerous red flags made the fraudulent nature of the scheme obvious and known to Chase,” the class action lawsuit proposed Wednesday states. “Despite those 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 it invested in 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 his co-counsel, claims that JPMorgan was Goliath’s sole banking institution. Additionally, it claims that approximately $253 million was deposited into a Chase account linked to Goliath between January 2023 and June 2025. Approximately $123 million was transferred from that account to the Coinbase crypto exchange, while around $50 million was sent to investors as supposed returns.
The lawsuit, which does not set a specific damages figure, repeatedly argued that the bank should have detected the alleged fraud solely from the flow of funds.
“From a bank’s perspective, the fraudulent scheme was obvious,” the complaint said. “A fraudulent scheme of this magnitude cannot be executed surreptitiously through a single bank.”
The lawsuit 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 cryptocurrencies,” the complaint said, Chase “knowingly allowed a bank customer, Goliath, to commingle investors’ money into Chase” and use funds from later investors to pay earlier ones “in a classic Ponzi scheme.”
