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EXCLUSIVE: X says ex-manager took $12,000 in crypto and bribed employee to restore scam accounts - RuntimeWire

RuntimeWire

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Scoop: RuntimeWire original reporting.

Why it matters

Crypto projects depend heavily on X for identity and distribution. If proven, the alleged scheme shows how paid internal access could restore scam accounts or redirect valuable handles.

At 10:38 p.m. on New Year's Day 2025, Erick McAfee was nearing the end of his last day at X. He had given notice a month earlier. Before he left, according to a lawsuit filed by the company, the senior manager emailed himself a list of contact information for members of his team.

On its own, the act might have passed for the ordinary housekeeping of a departing executive. X says the list included subordinates who had helped McAfee with a contested transfer of the username @agent and with other account requests that the company believes he submitted for outsiders. In the weeks that followed, X alleges, McAfee used those relationships to keep reaching into the platform after his own access had been cut off. He contacted former subordinates daily. He passed one employee's private contact information to an executive at Paradox Research. He eventually paid another X employee between $250 and $500 per account to seek the restoration of fraud-related and crypto-scam accounts, the complaint says.

X also alleges that McAfee received three Ethereum payments worth approximately $12,000 while he was still employed, on dates when he routed requests through internal channels for accounts outside his client portfolio. The company says it believes he received further undisclosed compensation.

The allegations appear in a lawsuit X filed in San Francisco Superior Court on April 23, 2025, against McAfee, Jeremy Munger and Munger's company, Brain Chain LLC. The case appears to have gone unreported. It reemerged this summer through a discovery fight that has produced a list of Brain Chain clients, references to payments connected with dozens of X accounts, and a judge's finding that Brain Chain's initial responses to X were “patently deficient.”

No court has determined that McAfee accepted bribes, that Munger paid him, or that either man manipulated an X account. The defendants are contesting X's case, and the lawsuit remains scheduled for trial in February 2027. The July 29 ruling concerns Brain Chain's conduct in discovery. None of the organizations newly identified as Brain Chain clients should be understood to have participated in the alleged scheme simply because they appear in a discovery response.

Sources

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/a2fnysi16o6l2d35njfj7/ALxWDeyXAu1ENUo88B-syN0?rlkey=2nwbono7y8nnicvez58z5sxgy&dl=1 X CORP vs ERIK MCAFEE, JEREMY MUNGER, and BRAIN CHAIN LLC

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/xxs4oyhf5lbldlxaj0zo8/CaseInfo2.pdf?rlkey=4xffgttrk6dnyddi0yx8kmeda&dl=1 July 29 2026 MINUTES - Case Number: CGC-25-624713

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