In my jurisdiction: A gift certificate or credit memo sold or issued for consideration in this state may not have an expiration date, or expiration, period.
For what it's worth: this varies per country. In The Netherlands for instance a gift certificate has a minimum validity of 1 year if there's a start and end date on it. If there's only a start date, the validity is (at least) 5 years, and if there's no date at all, it's valid indefinitely (
source in Dutch). The catch is: It's allowed to refer to general conditions on a website for validity.
(A judge can rule to end validity of this last category, as recently happened to old stamps (
another source in Dutch).
Sounds like this was an exit scam, planned 5 years in advance, with the distributors on the hook. It's quasi-legal due to the shitty EU protections for consumers, including some shitty protections for USA consumers (outside or Jurisdictions like my own). Everyone associated with this project should be investigated, IMO.