A large crypto trader from Puerto Rico has filed a lawsuit against Coinbase in federal court in San Francisco, accusing the exchange of holding cryptocurrency stolen from him during a 2024 hack and failing to return it even after a year and a half.
Some details in the lawsuit remain partially redacted, but the circumstances of the hack match one of the most high-profile incidents of August 2024. Back then, an unidentified victim lost more than $55M in DAI stablecoin after falling for a phishing scheme. Afterward, the victim hired several blockchain analytics firms to trace the stolen funds.
Investigators eventually tracked the stolen assets to a Coinbase account, where the funds ultimately ended up. In early December 2024, the exchange confirmed it had identified those assets and frozen them as part of its investigation.
But that is where things stalled. According to the plaintiff, a year and a half has now passed, yet the funds still have not been returned. Moreover, he claims Coinbase said that without a court ruling, the exchange would not return the funds.