Prominent Silicon Valley law firm Fenwick & West has filed a motion to dismiss a class-action lawsuit alleging it played a central role in enabling the multi-billion dollar fraud and subsequent collapse of cryptocurrency exchange FTX. The lawsuit, originally filed in 2023 by FTX customers, claims the firm provided "substantial assistance" by designing corporate structures that allowed customer funds to be diverted and by facilitating the sale of unregistered securities, including FTX's native token FTT.
In a court filing on August 27, 2025, Fenwick & West called the allegations "facile and flawed," arguing that after over two years of litigation, there is no evidence it knew about FTX's wrongdoing. The firm stated it merely provided "routine and lawful legal services" typical of any outside counsel and is not liable for "aiding and abetting a fraud it knew nothing about." The filing was in response to plaintiffs' August 11 request to amend their lawsuit, which cited evidence from Sam Bankman-Fried's criminal trial and FTX's bankruptcy proceedings suggesting Fenwick was "deeply intertwined" in key aspects of the fraud.
Fenwick challenged testimony from former FTX executives like Nishad Singh, Gary Wang, and Caroline Ellison, calling it misleading or inaccurate, and noted that multiple witnesses confirmed the scheme was carried out without the knowledge of outside advisers. The firm also criticized new allegations that it helped promote FTT token sales as "frivolous and untimely," accusing plaintiffs of attempting to recast lawyers as promoters after a judge allowed state securities claims to proceed against celebrity endorsers.
The court has yet to rule on whether the amended complaint will be accepted. Fenwick highlighted that similar aggressive allegations were previously dismissed against another law firm, Sullivan & Cromwell, due to lack of sufficient evidence.