This photo illustration shows an image of former President Donald Trump next to a phone screen that is displaying the Truth Social app, in Washington, DC, on February 21, 2022.
Stefani Reynolds | AFP | Getty Images
Investment firms led by the former CEO of the SPAC that merged with Donald Trump’s media company allege that their files were hacked and stolen by a current member of the media company’s board of directors.
In a federal civil lawsuit filed in South Florida last month, the firms accuse board member Eric Swider of plotting a coup in early 2023 to replace Patrick Orlando as CEO of the special purpose acquisition company, Digital World Acquisition Corp.
As part of that attempted ouster, Swider and others allegedly “stole access” to the firms’ computer systems and then “used the stolen information to attack” Orlando, according to the lawsuit.
It was “an audacious scheme to seize control of and enlarge their holdings,” claims the suit, which was filed by Benessere Investment Group and ARC Global Investments II.
The suit seeks damages and an injunction “prohibiting the use of the stolen information and to stop the Defendants hacking” the firms’ files.
Orlando was fired from Digital World in March 2023 and replaced by Swider.
That blank check company last month completed a merger to take Trump Media & Technology Group Corp. public, allowing it to trade on the Nasdaq Stock Market. The company, which owns the Trump-centric social media app Truth Social and trades under the ticker DJT, soared in its stock market debut but those gains have since erased.
On Wednesday alone, the share price fell nearly 9%. Since April 1, the stock has lost almost 45% of its value.
The Florida lawsuit is just one in a series of messy and dramatic legal disputes that have come to define Trump Media’s rocky road to an IPO, and its equally turbulent first weeks as a public company.
DWAC in July settled fraud charges with the Securities and Exchange Commission, though the agency found the SPAC had…
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