Lime Chairman Brad Bao Now Riding a Different Kind of Scooter—Straight Into $157M Crypto Wash Trading Suit

Federal prosecutors’ multi-year crypto dragnet has finally caught up with a Silicon Valley scooter dad, with Lime co-founder Brad Bao now dodging two RICO lawsuits worth $157 million over his alleged joyride through Cere Network’s financial plumbing. Turns out, when your token’s trading volume looks too good to be true, it’s probably because someone was just washing their hands of it—repeatedly, and with insider precision.

The civil cases ride the coattails of a broader U.S. purge of crypto charlatans, most notably Gotbit Ltd. founder Aleksei Andryunin, who already pleaded guilty to wire-fraud conspiracy, did eight months in the slammer, and coughed up $23 million in crypto—admitting he inflated trading stats like a degen pump group with a spreadsheet and a dream. His crime? Making tokens look spicy by trading them with himself. The audacity.

Now, the RICO heat is spreading to Cere insiders, with court docs obtained by outlets including IBT revealing two parallel lawsuits filed in the Northern District of California. Named defendants include Bao, Cere CEO Fred Jin, and a supporting cast of alleged accomplices who may soon need better alibis—or at least better mixers for their wash trades. The plaintiffs aren’t just mad; they’re lawyered up and demanding receipts.

The first suit comes from Goopal Digital Limited, a Hong Kong-linked investor crew throwing down for $100 million in damages. The second, from San Francisco’s Josef Qu, demands $57 million. Combined, that’s $157 million in investor regret—roughly the GDP of a small island nation or the entire emotional damage budget of a failed altseason. Both claims hinge on November 2021, when CERE launched with fireworks and promptly fizzled into a wet firecracker.

Allegedly, Jin outsourced the fireworks to Gotbit, using them to generate fake trading volume on day one—less a market debut, more a performance art piece titled How to Exit Liquidity While Pretending to Build. While retail investors were still figuring out if their wallets were synced, insiders allegedly dumped $41.78 million worth of CERE on exchanges, despite public promises that their bags were locked, loaded with vesting schedules, and not for immediate resale. Surprise, surprise: they were for immediate resale.

Cere reportedly raised $42.96 million from over 5,000 investors, many via Republic under Reg D—meaning accredited adults signed up thinking they were funding Web3 infrastructure, not auditioning for a Ponzi pilot episode. Meanwhile, CoinMarketCap and CryptoRank data show CERE peaking near $0.47 in early November 2021—only to crater to $0.00061 today. That’s not a correction. That’s a freefall with a parachute made of vaporware.

Qu, the San Francisco plaintiff, claims he invested back in 2019 via a Simple Agreement for Future Tokens (SAFT), entitling him to 27,777,778 CERE tokens. But here’s the kicker: he never got a single token, while insiders allegedly moved theirs to exchanges “within hours” of launch. Talk about a fast exit—faster than a VC ghosting a post-mortem.

Bao, best known for helping build Lime into a scooter empire spanning 280 cities, allegedly lent his Silicon Valley sheen to Cere like a celebrity endorsement for a bridge-to-nowhere project. The suits claim he received director’s fees, an early CERE allocation (because early access is always for the insiders, never the stans), approved transfers to Jin-controlled accounts, and generally played the role of trustworthy statesman while the ship quietly took on water.

The Qu complaint goes full securities-law cosplay, invoking Section 20(a) of the Securities Exchange Act to tag Bao as a “control person”—a legal euphemism for “you didn’t pull the trigger, but you held the gun.” Even if he didn’t press “send” on every insider dump, his position of authority allegedly makes him liable. Think of it as the corporate version of “you’re responsible for the party damage because you signed the lease.”

And then there’s the $16.6 million in Cere treasury funds that allegedly vanished into the DeFi void like a lost Lambo in a yield farm. The suits detail a shopping spree of questionable judgment: $6.51 million into Mochi Protocol (RIP), $3.27 million into a CVX/ETH liquidity pool (good luck exiting that), $780,000 on Maple Finance, and $345,000 into the imploded Neutrino USDN system. All reportedly done without investor thumbs-up—because nothing says “decentralized governance” like unilateral, high-risk bets on collapsing protocols.

The filings paint Jin as a serial founder with a clear playbook: launch a project (Funler in 2016), raise funds under shiny promises, extract value, repeat. Bitlearn in 2018, Cere in 2019—same script, new ticker. Now, he’s allegedly at the helm of CEF AI Inc., an AI venture suspiciously funded by Cere proceeds and currently in the crosshairs of asset-freeze requests targeting wallets, bank accounts, and