In May 2024, the FTX Recovery Trust (the legal entity managing assets after FTX's bankruptcy) filed a lawsuit in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of
Delaware against:
Neil Patel (co-founder of NP Digital)
NP Digital, LLC
I’m Kind of a Big Deal, LLC (another company controlled by Neil Patel)
The Allegation was that over $30.8 million was paid to Neil Patel’s companies from FTX accounts, primarily funded by customer deposits.
These payments were for marketing services that were:
->Poorly performed
->Overpriced
->In some cases, never delivered at all
One agreement paid $14.8 million to NP Digital simply to "find a third-party consultant" which never happened.
NP Digital allegedly charged FTX up to 12x higher fees than typical clients.
Invoices were routed secretly (e.g., via Slack), outside of normal financial controls, just weeks before FTX collapsed.
Neil Patel was treated as an insider at FTX, even holding the title of Marketing Manager and signing deals on FTX’s behalf.
Legal Claims made so far
->U.S. Bankruptcy Code for fraudulent and preferential transfers
->State laws (California, Nevada, and Delaware) for fraudulent conveyance
->Seeks to recover all transferred funds, disallow any claims from NP Digital, and subordinate them in bankruptcy distribution
Recent Developments:
In May 2025, the court denied Neil Patel’s motion to keep parts of the marketing contracts secret, concluding that much of it must be made public
June 2, 2025: The court acknowledged NP Digital's intent to serve a subpoena on Dentsu Creative, LLC.
They can now request (beg) documents from Dentsu to help support their defense, likely to show that NP Digital’s pricing or services weren’t out of line with others hired by FTX. Ex-Dentsu's cartel is anyways in leadership positions across NP Digital's offices worldwide. So, you know how this will end. Why can't they get it from any other agency? Doesn't USA have any Digital marketing agency apart from Dentsu?
Supporting legal filing docs attached.
From India perspective:
Neil and his business partner were forcing the India agency founder+CEO to extract funds from Indian account to their Bank of America account. When he denied based on legal team advise, Neil Patel and his team unlawfully took control of his email address and changed the passwords to hold it as blackmail. Currently NP Digital India Founder and CEO has filed a lawsuit against Neil and his partner Mike Kamo seeking partnership dissolution.
Hope Justice get served in US as well as in India in such a way that no other agency should ever think about extorting money from clients.
P.S: I think this entire thing is around Neil and his partners. Definitely not the employees of NP Digital. I've worked with some really amazing people there and I have huge respect for all of them. I feel sorry for what they might be going through. People > Company.
This post was originally shared by on Linkedin.