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U.K. judge allows lawsuit over alleged $172M bitcoin theft between spouses

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U.K. judge allows lawsuit over alleged $172M bitcoin theft between spouses

A U.K. High Court judge allowed a lawsuit over the alleged theft of more than 2,323 bitcoin to move forward last week, in a case that highlights how the country’s legal system is still adapting traditional property law to cryptocurrency.

U.K. resident Ping Fai Yuen claimed in court filings in last week that his estranged wife, Fun Yung Li, used CCTV cameras in their home to secretly obtain the recovery phrase to his hardware wallet and transferred 2,323 bitcoin without his permission in August 2023, according to the docket in the High Court of England and Wales.

The bitcoin was worth just under $60 million at the time of the alleged theft 30 months ago, but is now worth roughly $172 million at the current price of just over $74,000.

The stolen crypto was stored in a Trezor cold wallet secured by a PIN. But anyone with the wallet’s 24-word recovery phrase could recreate the wallet and move the funds, the court noted. It was then transferred through several transactions and now sits across 71 blockchain addresses not held at exchanges. The funds have not moved since Dec. 21, 2023, according to the court.

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Yuen said he later installed audio recording devices in the home after his daughter warned him Li was trying to take the bitcoin. After discovering the transfer, Yuen confronted Li and assaulted her. He later pleaded guilty to assault occasioning actual bodily harm and two counts of common assault in 2024. Officers seized several hardware wallets and recovery seeds during a search of her home, though authorities later took no further action pending new evidence.

Earlier, according to the filings, the wife asked the court to throw out the case, arguing that because the husband’s main claim was conversion, which in England is a legal term traditionally used when someone takes physical property, it could not apply to digital assets, such as bitcoin.

The judged agreed with the wife, but ruled the case can still proceed under different legal claims that could allow the husband to recover the bitcoin if his allegations are proven. The case will now proceed to trial, the judge said.

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Crypto World

North Korean Hackers Infiltrated Crypto For Seven Years

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North Korean Hackers Infiltrated Crypto For Seven Years

North Korean IT workers have been embedding themselves in crypto companies and decentralized finance projects for at least seven years, according to a cybersecurity analyst.

“Lots of DPRK IT workers built the protocols you know and love, all the way back to DeFi summer,” said MetaMask developer and security researcher Taylor Monahan on Sunday. 

Monahan claimed that over 40 DeFi platforms, some being well-known names, have had North Korean IT workers working on their protocols.

The “seven years of blockchain dev experience” on their resume is “not a lie,” she added.

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The Lazarus Group is a North Korean-affiliated hacking collective that has stolen an estimated $7 billion in crypto since 2017, according to analysts at creator network R3ACH. 

It has been linked to the industry’s highest-profile hacks, including the $625 million Ronin Bridge exploit in 2022, the $235 million WazirX hack in 2024 and the $1.4 billion Bybit heist in 2025.

Monahan’s comments came just hours after the Drift Protocol said it had “medium-high confidence” that the recent $280 million exploit against it was carried out by a North Korean state-affiliated group.

DeFi execs speak up on DPRK infiltration attempts

Tim Ahhl, founder of the Titan Exchange, a Solana-based DEX aggregator, said that in a previous job, “we interviewed someone who turned out to be a Lazarus operative.”

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Ahhl said the candidate “did video calls and was extremely qualified.” He declined an in-person interview and they later discovered his name in a Lazarus “info dump.” 

The US Office of Foreign Assets Control has a website where crypto businesses can screen counterparties against updated OFAC sanctions lists and be alert to patterns consistent with IT worker fraud. 

Lazarus Group attack timeline. Source: R3ACH Network

Related: Drift Protocol says $280M exploit took ‘months of deliberate preparation’

Drift Protocol targeted by DPRK third-party intermediaries 

Drift Protocol’s postmortem on last week’s $280 million exploit also pointed to North Korean-affiliated hackers for the attack.

However, it said the face-to-face meetings that eventually led to the exploit were not with North Korean nationals, but rather “third-party intermediaries” with “fully constructed identities including employment histories, public-facing credentials, and professional networks.”

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“Years later, and it seems Lazarus now has non-NKs [North Koreans] working for them to con people in person,” said Ahhl. 

Threats via job interviews are not sophisticated

Lazarus Group is the collective name for “all DPRK state-sponsored cyber actors,” explained blockchain sleuth ZachXBT on Sunday.

“The main issue is that everyone groups them all together when the complexity of threats is different,” he added. 

ZachXBT said that threats via job postings, LinkedIn, email, Zoom, or interviews are “basic and in no way sophisticated … the only thing about it is they’re relentless.”

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“If you or your team still falls for them in 2026, you’re very likely negligent,” he said. 

There are two types of attack vectors, one more sophisticated than the other. Source: ZachXBT

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