Businessman and TV personality Kevin O’Leary has won a multi-million-dollar defamation lawsuit against crypto influencer Ben Armstrong, also known as “Bitboy.”
Miami federal judge Beth Bloom on Friday ordered Armstrong to pay almost $2.83 million in damages to O’Leary over a series of social media posts accusing the Shark Tank star of being a murderer.
O’Leary and his wife, Linda, were in a boating accident in 2019 that resulted in two deaths when their boat struck another. Armstrong accused O’Leary of murder in multiple X posts in March 2025 and claimed he paid millions to cover up the incident.
In her order, Judge Bloom said that O’Leary wasn’t operating the boat at the time and was never charged, and while Linda O’Leary was charged with careless operation of a vehicle, she was exonerated after a 13-day trial had found the other boat was operating without its lights on.
Armstrong posted O’Leary’s phone number in X outburst
Judge Bloom said Armstrong had “escalated his harassment campaign” by sharing O’Leary’s private phone number and “urging his followers to ‘call a real life murderer,’” which saw him suspended from X for 12 hours.
O’Leary had said his phone was “lighting up” after the post, and the sharing of his number “significantly affected him, both in his professional and personal life,” according to the order.
Judge Bloom made a default judgment in the case as Armstrong failed to respond to the complaint or appear in court and was ordered to pay $750,000 in mental anguish damages, $78,000 in reputational damages, and $2 million in punitive damages.
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The decision is the latest legal blow to Armstrong, who has been embroiled in public legal controversies over the past few years after being removed from the Bitboy Crypto brand in 2023, once one of the most-watched crypto-related YouTube channels.
He was arrested in March in Florida over emails he had sent to Georgia Superior Court Judge Kimberly Childs while acting as his own attorney. He was also arrested again in July in Georgia on charges of making harassing phone calls.
Armstrong was also arrested years earlier, in 2023, while livestreaming outside a former associate’s house whom he had alleged was in possession of his Lamborghini.
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