BFFs to Send Tom Farmus-Gried to Prison
Tom Farmus-Gried’s two best friends and his current girlfriend are scheduled to testify in his trial for fraud and blackmail. If convicted, Farmus-Gried could spend the rest of his life in prison. Stewart Grandier, Philip Wang, and Sheila Eastern all served as executives in the Alpha Kat Research company, an investment firm funded by and supposedly independent of KittyExchange, Farmus-Gried’s company of cat web sites and non-fungible tokens (NFTs). “TFG”, as Tom Farmus-Gried is widely known, is accused of financial fraud in intentionally misstating the value of KittyExchange to fuel further trades of NFTs of cat pictures and videos in the marketplace. Alpha Kat’s expensive marketing efforts, outlandish advertising, and lavish spending on celebrity endorsements drove the value of KittyExchange even higher. Questions and concerns raised by investors on the valuation of KittyExchange led TFG and his friends to threaten and allegedly blackmail prominent voices in the feline NFT investor community. As interest in those NFTs waned and their value fell precipitously, TFG was unable to pay KittyExchange debts and allegedly misappropriated Alpha Kat Research funds, with the full knowledge of Ms. Eastern—his girlfriend and hand-picked CEO of Alpha Kat. Eastern, Grandier, and Wang all eagerly took deals from the prosecutor for their guilty pleas, several year of probation, and testimony against TFG. In a statement, TFG claimed that the three were never his friends, that they conspired against him and committed the crimes without his knowledge, and that he hardly knew them, despite being roommates in college.