PANews reported on July 9 that according to Eleanor Terrett, attorney John E Deaton filed a securities fraud class action lawsuit against William Sarris, the founder and former CEO of Linqto, on behalf of thousands of retail investors. The lawsuit alleges that Sarris used the Linqto platform SPV to sell shares of private companies such as Ripple, Uphold and Kraken by failing to disclose markups of up to 60%, misleading exemptions and unlicensed sales strategies, and ignored internal legal warnings in 2023 and 2024, suspected of violating multiple SEC and FINRA regulations. Deaton said that the lawsuit was against Sarris personally and was not protected by bankruptcy, and any compensation would be used to compensate the injured investors.