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Cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex has been ordered by a UK’s high court to hold up $860,000 worth of Bitcoin (BTC) that flowed through its platform for a ransomware payment.
These funds were part of the $1.2 million paid by a Canadian insurance company that fell victim to a malware strain called BitPaymer. This malware encrypted all of the company’s computer systems having bypassed the system’s firewalls and antivirus software and demanded BTC in exchange for a decryption tool.
The defendant was asked to pay $950k in Bitcoin and once the systems were brought back online, it has been found that 96 BTC worth $860k had made its way to Bitfinex.
Now, the High Court has demanded the Virgin Islands-registered Bitfinex to provide the details of the users involved in the transaction and lock those funds if they are accessible.
The exchange maintained that it assisted authorities in tracing the Bitcoins as it said in an interview, “In this case we have assisted the claimant to trace the stolen Bitcoin and we understand the focus of the claimant’s attention is no longer on the Bitfinex platform. It now appears Bitfinex is an entirely innocent party mixed up in this wrongdoing.”
Four Class Action Lawsuit Clubbed into One
In another news, the four class-action suits against, Bitfinex, Tether and their parent company iFinex over alleged market manipulation leading Bitcoin bull run market in 2017 have been consolidated into one.
As per the court order, the four complaints by Leibowitz, Faubus, and Ebanks, and Young will now be heard jointly.
Ebanks’ complaint also alleges that the defendants deliberately hid their relationship that allowed for illegal activity but despite their “best efforts, the close interconnections between Tether and Bitfinex were exposed.”
New York Attorney General (NYAG) in a separate legal action has also accused the companies of concealing their relationship to commit financial crimes.