An anonymous crypto whale based in Puerto Rico sued Coinbase this week, accusing the crypto exchange of failing to release funds stolen from the user in a 2024 hack.
The lawsuit, filed Monday in a federal court in San Francisco, claims that after the hack, the whale hired multiple on-chain investigation firms to track the crypto down. Ultimately, the suit alleges, the sleuths traced the stolen funds back to a Coinbase account, and by early December of 2024, the crypto exchange confirmed it had identified the funds, which would be frozen pending an investigation.
The crypto whale now claims, however, that a year and a half later, they still have not received their crypto back, and that Coinbase has said it will not return the funds until compelled to do so by a court order.
Coinbase did not immediately respond to Decrypt’s request for comment.
The victim, thinking they were signing into the site, unintentionally handed control of their wallet over to the hackers, who immediately sent the DAI to other crypto wallets and began laundering the funds with coin mixing services.
In the lawsuit filed against Coinbase this week, the plaintiff said they had failed to notice that the fake login page, which should have been DefiSaver.com, instead ended in “.app.”
