Ben Pasternak, the 26-year-old founder of Solana-based token launchpad Believe, was arrested in New York on charges of second-degree strangulation and third-degree assault. The platform's native token BELIEVE now trades 99.8% below its all-time high. A class action lawsuit filed against him alleges that he systematically extracted approximately $54 million in fees from roughly $6 billion in trading volume across three successive token projects.
Criminal Charges: March 31 Incident in New York
Pasternak faces one count of second-degree strangulation and two counts of third-degree assault with intent to cause physical injury. The victim is widely identified online as TikTok influencer Evelyn Ha, whom Pasternak had been publicly dating since mid-2024. He has pleaded not guilty; his next court appearance is set for June 11. According to Wu Blockchain, Pasternak was staying at a hotel charging $2,000 per night at the time of the arrest, which prosecutors allege was partly to avoid being served with civil lawsuit papers.
Class Action: Three Tokens, One Alleged Playbook
The class action complaint details a pattern. Pasternak founded Launchcoin, a social token launchpad that grew rapidly to a peak market cap of $370 million. In October 2025, he announced Launchcoin would be retired and replaced with a new token called BELIEVE. The mandatory migration had a two-week conversion window, creating 333 million new tokens distributed to insider-linked wallets and shrinking existing holders' stakes by about one third. Holders who missed the October 29, 2025 deadline had their tokens permanently destroyed.
The suit alleges Pasternak “ran the same play three times” under the tokens PASTERNAK, LAUNCHCOIN, and BELIEVE. Across all iterations, Believe processed roughly $6 billion in trading volume, from which Pasternak extracted an estimated $54 million in fees. Consumer losses are estimated in the hundreds of millions. BELIEVE now trades 99.8% below its $0.35 all-time high. No formal criminal charges specifically tied to the token allegations have been filed yet.
Pasternak now faces simultaneous legal pressure from both criminal and civil proceedings. His criminal case returns to court on June 11; the civil class action continues.