Judge Rochon Dismisses LIBRA Class Action Against Meteora and Chow

Southern District of New York Closes the Case

A federal judge in Manhattan has ended the American chapter of the LIBRA litigation. In an opinion and order entered Sept. 29 on the docket of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, Judge Jennifer L. Rochon granted the motions to dismiss filed by former Meteora CEO Benjamin Chow and the Kelsier defendants, and accepted the position of Dynamic Labs that claims against the Meteora protocol itself could not proceed. The court denied plaintiffs Omar Hurlock and Anuj Mehta permission to file a second amended complaint, dismissed the amended complaint with prejudice and directed the clerk to close the case. The opinion and order is docket entry 274 in litigation investors originally filed in March 2025 over the LIBRA and M3M3 token launches, alleging fraud, conspiracy, violations of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, breaches of New York consumer protection law and unjust enrichment.

Three legal flaws sank the complaint. On Meteora, Rochon sided with the argument that the protocol is software: plaintiffs had described Meteora as an association of people and entities running its programs on Solana, pointing to its team, governance arrangements, job postings and the multisignature process used to modify the code, but the judge found those allegations did not establish the coordinated membership and common purpose required of an unincorporated association or partnership under New York or federal law. Claims against Chow failed under Rule 12(b)(6), which lets a court dismiss a complaint that states no legally sufficient case: his technical assistance before launch, his knowledge of the coming LIBRA deployment and fees earned through the protocol did not plausibly show intent to join a fraud, as his counsel confirmed after the ruling. The RICO claims against Kelsier Labs, Hayden Davis and the other Kelsier defendants failed on continuity, because roughly six months of alleged conduct satisfies neither closed-ended nor open-ended racketeering, and the court found no personal jurisdiction supporting the remaining state-law claims.

Milei's Post and the Argentine Trail

The dispute traces back to Feb. 14, 2025, when LIBRA launched on Solana in a quiet rollout with no public sale disclosed in advance. Hours later, Argentine President Javier Milei posted on X in support of the project, linking to the Viva La Libertad website and sharing the token's wallet address; on a platform where Solana Blinks and Actions rails make one-click token purchases routine, the post pushed a wave of buyers into the pools. The LIBRA price collapsed within hours. Milei deleted the post, said he had not known the project's details, and later dismissed the losses with a comparison to gambling: “They knew very well the risk they took. If you go to the casino and lose money, that is your problem.” Estimates put the number of affected investors above 44,000. Onchain analysis of the launch traced early trading through Meteora's liquidity pools, which price swaps bin by bin much like an order book, and alleged insiders withheld a large share of the supply and extracted funds once trading opened. Earlier in the case, Circle froze roughly $57 million in USDC in May 2025 tied to wallets at issue; a U.S. court later lifted the freeze after the defendants agreed not to move the funds. The American dismissal does not end the story: in August 2026 an Argentine federal judge ordered 25 crypto wallets frozen and sought account identities, transaction records, IP addresses and know-your-customer data, citing eight wallets investigators described as belonging to the Libra Team, while a Buenos Aires federal court rejected a bid by two lawmakers to join as private prosecutors.

What the Sept. 29 Order Settles, and What It Does Not

For our desk, the docket entry itself carries the weight: Judge Rochon's Sept. 29 order grants dismissal with prejudice, refuses a second amendment it deems incapable of curing the pleading defects, and closes the New York case outright. LIBRA was pitched as private funding for Argentine small business, yet it functioned as a memecoin rather than a governance token, with no product standing behind the price. That gap, together with the wallet freeze still running in Argentina, keeps legal and reputational exposure alive even as the U.S. fraud and RICO claims die.