This week, an anonymous crypto whale residing in Puerto Rico sued Coinbase, alleging that the cryptocurrency exchange failed to return funds stolen during a 2024 hack.
Although key details in the lawsuit have been redacted, the information in the documents regarding this hack closely resembles a major attack that occurred in August 2024, which resulted in a cryptocurrency user losing over $55 million worth of Ethereum stablecoins.Daafter falling victim to a phishing scam.
The lawsuit, filed on Monday in federal court in San Francisco, alleges that after the hack, the "whale" hired several on-chain investigation firms to track the stolen cryptocurrency. The lawsuit further states that, ultimately, these investigators traced the stolen funds to a Coinbase account, and by early December 2024, the cryptocurrency exchange confirmed it had located the funds and frozen them pending investigation.
However, this crypto whale now claims that, over a year and a half later, they still have not received their cryptocurrency, and Coinbase says it will not return the funds unless ordered to do so by a court.
Coinbase has not responded to this yet.DecryptRequested comment.
In 2024, a $55 million DAI theft was initially discovered by an anonymous on-chain crypto detective.ZachXBTThe hacker created a fake login page for DeFi Saver, a cryptocurrency management tool used by victims, using a platform called “Inferno Drainer”.
The victim thought they were logging into a website, but inadvertently handed over control of their wallet to the hacker, who immediately transferred the DAI to another cryptocurrency wallet and began using a mixer to launder the funds.
In this week's lawsuit against Coinbase, the plaintiffs stated that they did not notice the fraudulent login page (which should have been DefiSaver.com) ended in ".app".