Crypto Exchanges
By Steven Anderson
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How the Hack Went Down. D.B. clicked a malicious link on August 20, 2024. The link looked like it came from DefiSaver, a…
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Five Counts Against Coinbase. The lawsuit hits Coinbase with five separate counts. One of them is unjust enrichment—D.B.
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Unknown Hackers and a Ukrainian Suspect. D.B. isn't just suing Coinbase. He filed seven counts against an unknown hacker or group of…
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A Puerto Rican man lost $55 million in crypto. He tracked the money to Coinbase. Now the exchange won't give it back without a court order, and he's suing.
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The plaintiff, identified in court documents only as "D.B.," filed the lawsuit Monday in California.
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D.B. clicked a malicious link on August 20, 2024. The link looked like it came from DefiSaver, a legitimate Ethereum DeFi tool that plenty of crypto users trust. It didn't.
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The stolen funds didn't sit still. Hackers pushed the DAI through Tornado Cash, a crypto mixing service that obscures transaction trails.
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D.B.'s team managed to trace the funds. His agents, Zero Shadow and Five Stones, contacted Coinbase and got the exchange to freeze a retail account holding the stolen crypto.
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The lawsuit hits Coinbase with five separate counts. One of them is unjust enrichment—D.B. thinks the exchange probably made money by holding onto his crypto all these months.
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He's also asking for a court declaration that he's the rightful owner. Pretty straightforward stuff, but it hasn't been enough to get Coinbase to move.
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Coinbase hasn't said anything publicly about the case. Reached for comment, the company didn't respond. The exchange is sticking to its position—no court order, no release.
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The timing lines up with a $55 million DAI draining incident reported in late August 2024. Security researchers tied that hack to malware called "Inferno Drainer," which had been…
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D.B. isn't just suing Coinbase. He filed seven counts against an unknown hacker or group of hackers, referred to in court documents as John Doe.
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See also: CFTC Ruling on Kalshi and Coinbase-Backed Prediction Markets Could Reshape Crypto Betting
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The lawsuit names a Ukrainian individual, Oleksiy Oleksandrovych Goreliikhin, as someone who played a role in laundering the stolen funds.
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