Believe founder Benjamin Pasternak arrested on strangulation

Benjamin Pasternak, 26, was arrested Tuesday in New York and charged with second-degree strangulation and third-degree assault for an alleged March 31 incident, court records show. He has pleaded not guilty and is scheduled to appear in court on June 11.

Pasternak is the founder of Believe, a Solana-based app that lets users buy, trade and launch tokens tied to creators and influencers. The platform allows token launches on Solana by replying to posts from Believe's account on X.

A class-action lawsuit filed March 23 accuses Pasternak and his companies of orchestrating a rug pull that caused large investor losses. The complaint says the company forced a migration last October from an original token called Launchcoin to a new token named Believe.

The complaint alleges the migration created 333 million additional tokens allocated to insiders, diluting existing holdings by about one-third, and that tokens held by users who did not migrate were destroyed.

The complaint alleges Pasternak ‘ran the same play three times, under three different token names: generate excitement, bring consumers in, collect fees, and let the token collapse.' The filing also says Pasternak stopped communicating with investors after the migration.

Market data shows the platform's native token has fallen about 99.7% from a May 2025 peak and was trading near $0.0007009. The filing cited a roughly 24% decline in the prior 24 hours at the time of the price check.

The criminal charges are separate from the civil lawsuit, and court records do not indicate whether the arrest is connected to the investor claims. Representatives for Believe did not immediately respond to requests for comment.