Believe founder arrest adds fresh pressure to token case

Believe founder Benjamin Pasternak was arrested on Tuesday on one count of strangulation in the second degree and two counts of assault in the third degree, according to public court records. 

The charges stem from an incident dated March 31. Pasternak has pleaded not guilty and is scheduled to return to court on June 11.

The arrest adds a criminal case to a growing list of problems around the Solana-based SocialFi platform. Believe is known as a token launch and trading app tied to creators and influencers, and it also lets users create tokens through posts on X. The current criminal matter, based on the available records, is separate from the civil case linked to Believe’s token activity.

Civil lawsuit targets Believe token practices

A class-action complaint filed on March 23 in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York names Pasternak, B24, Inc. and the Believe Foundation as defendants. 

The suit was brought by Joshua Lee and Pierre Montmeas on behalf of holders of the $PASTERNAK, $LAUNCHCOIN and $BELIEVE tokens who say they suffered losses from deceptive and misleading conduct.

The complaint says Pasternak launched his token in January 2025 on Clout, a platform later renamed Believe. It also says he publicly claimed “0 ownership” in the token and later promoted a buyback plan that would use platform revenue to support the token price while urging holders to keep their positions.

Complaint focuses on forced migration and dilution

According to the filing, the central dispute began on October 15, 2025, when the team announced a forced migration from $LAUNCHCOIN to a new $BELIEVE token. The complaint says the move raised total supply from 1 billion to 1,333,333,284 tokens, creating about 333 million additional tokens and diluting existing holders by 33.3%.

The same filing says the newly created tokens were allocated to insiders, while holders who did not complete the migration lost their old tokens. It also says a portion of the foundation allocation, about 40 million tokens, was immediately unlocked. The complaint states that tokens left unmigrated were permanently burned.

Moreover, the complaint further says Pasternak later stopped posting updates and left investors without an explanation after the migration. In one of its sharpest lines, the filing says,