It reads like a Netflix drama: A Canadian heiress from one of the world’s wealthiest families is suing her former best friend after a cryptocurrency investment they made — on the advice of a psychic and an astrologer — collapsed, costing them $80 million.
Taylor Thomson, 66, the middle daughter of the billionaire Thomson family, and Ashley Richardson, 47, became close friends after meeting at a Malibu party in 2009. For more than a decade they lived the high life in Los Angeles, but their friendship fell apart in 2022 when the cryptocurrency market crashed.
According to The Wall Street Journal, the two began investing in a little-known digital token called Persistence (XPRT) after Richardson followed the advice of celebrity psychic Michelle Whitedove, later confirmed by Thomson’s personal astrologer, Robert Sabella. At its peak, Thomson had more than $140 million tied up in the token, managed by Richardson.
When the market collapsed, Thomson accused Richardson of secretly making hundreds of thousands of risky trades and exploiting her wealth. Richardson denies the claims, saying she acted only with Thomson’s approval and invested her own savings as well.
“Because of you I lost everything, and you decided to sue the one person who had nothing left to lose,” Richardson wrote to Thomson in one of her last messages. “I loved you more than anything.”
Bradley Dizik, president of the technology division at consulting firm Guidepost, which Thomson hired, said Richardson carried out 450,000 trades with Thomson’s money in the first half of 2022, many without authorization. He said Thomson lost more than $80 million because of them.
Richardson, who now works as an Uber driver and says she cannot afford an attorney, argues the trades were necessary because of the low liquidity of some tokens. “We never had a formal contract — only a clear oral agreement that was repeatedly confirmed,” she told the Journal.
Thomson sued both Richardson and Persistence in 2023. She later reached a confidential settlement with the crypto company but continues to pursue her former friend in court. Richardson has filed a $10 million countersuit, a complaint she says was drafted with the help of ChatGPT.
The case has turned deeply personal. Richardson claims Thomson once tried to turn their friendship romantic, and in angry text messages she accused the heiress of hiring ex-FBI agents to intimidate her family. Thomson, for her part, has hired an extensive legal team to press her claim that Richardson squandered her fortune.