One of GOP nominee Donald Trump’s donors is facing a new class action lawsuit that alleges he committed fraud.
Newsweek reviewed the legal filings recently, which show that Gary Cardone, his Chargebacks911 company and co-owner Monica Eaton are all accused of carrying out deceptive business practices.
The defendants denied that they have done anything wrong, but have been unsuccessful in getting the case dismissed.
Cardone donated to Trump’s campaign by giving Bitcoin that, at the time of the donation, was worth an estimated $850,000. It’s certainly ont small peanuts, though it does pale in comparison to the total amount some of Trump’s top donors have given, including Timothy Mellon, who federal filings show gave $50 million to the Trump campaign.
This legal complaint was first filed last year, but was only turned into a class action lawsuit on August 13. The suit was filed by Charlene Bavencoff and Janet Sihler, who claim that Brightree Holdings Limited deceived them over the sale of some diet pills.
According to the plaintiffs, Brightree was only allowed to continue selling the pills because of some actions that Cardone, his company and his associate took.
Their claim that the defendants all tried to minimize the scale of bank chargebacks and those to credit card companies from customers who were trying to get refunds for diet pills that they believed they weren’t charged rightly for.
If those companies understood the full details of the chargebacks, the suit claims, they wouldn’t have continued to process payments for them.
Corey Roush, a lawyer representing the defendants in this case, said that Brightree used the services that Chargebacks911 provided from 2019 through 2021. He also alleged, though, that the company stopped paying their bills, which led to Chargebacks911 pausing their account and then ultimately terminating their user account.
Roush added that Cardone retired from Chargebacks911 before the original suit was filed, saying the company plans to appeal the court’s decision to go ahead and certify it as a class action lawsuit.
He added Chargebacks911 “plans to continue to vigorously defend against this suit given the concocted theory and complete lack of evidence supporting that theory.”
According to Kevin Kneupper of Kneupper & Covey, the law firm that’s representing the plaintiffs, the case could result in damages that could exceed $70 million.
Legal filings show that Eaton and Cardone have disputed the claims and filed three motions to have the case dismissed, but all three were unsuccessful.
In one of those filings, which was completed in September of last year, the defendants’ lawyers wrote:
“Unfortunately, the online retail space has some bad actors who make false promises in advertisements or otherwise engage in deceptive conduct. Sometimes, those bad actors use ChgBacks911’s service to handle their chargebacks.”
They also said that there’s “no basis in law” for the case being turned into a class action lawsuit, the defendants have argued in separate filings.
