He sold fake tokens to an agricultural technology company
June 22, 2023 | 10:27 p.m. ET
The last time Home Improvement star Zachery Ty Bryan was in the news was for allegedly strangling his girlfriend. The story isn’t much better this time. According to a detailed report by , Bryan got several people to invest in a crypto company and now owes them around $50,000.
Bryan got into cryptocurrency at the behest of his child star Brock Pierce, an early beneficiary of the bitcoin business. After making millions of dollars himself, he joined Producers Market, an agriculture-related tech startup whose goal is to empower farmers and educate consumers about farmers’ products. In 2018, the company investigated a token sale that raises funds from the public by offering them insider privileges through the purchase of digital tokens.
According to THR, Bryan began selling these tokens privately, although Producers Market had previously decided not to conduct such a sale. “It sounded really interesting. I should have been smarter, but I trusted [the investment] because it was through a friend,” a source said. “I sent him the money and he said, ‘Great dude, this is going to be huge and I’m excited to see what the future holds for you.'” The source, of course, never saw her money again.
Bryan reportedly even convinced a college student he met on Bumble to wire him $5,000 – most of which she secured from family. “I spoke to a lawyer and [he] “I laughed at the contract because it was a pretty boring document sent through DocuSign,” said the young woman, Courtney Ledford.
Multiple sources have said they have reached out to Bryan over the years for a status update on their investments. In some cases, the actor reacted quickly and kept the facade. In other cases, they were told that he no longer had that phone number.
The dense account offers more worrying anecdotes about Bryan’s post-renovation life; Aside from becoming a fixture on right-wing cable news, he’s received multiple drunk-driving charges and admits to having a drinking problem, and had three children with the woman he arrested for strangling (he has four further with his ex-wife, Carly Matros). He also faced a lawsuit from a man named Cameron Moore, who alleges that Bryan failed to repay a $60,000 investment he made in a film Bryan was producing. After Bryan failed to recognize the lawsuit, a judge awarded Moore $108,940.67.
Read the Hollywood Reporter’s full account of Bryan’s affairs here.