A federal judge in Florida has ruled in favor of a plaintiff who sued anonymous hackers and sent formal notice of the legal action via NFT, according to recent court documents.
The unidentified hackers stole $971,291 worth of USDT (Tether) from the Coinbase wallet of the plaintiff Rangan Bandyopadhyay in December 2021, according to a default judgment issued by Judge Beth Bloom of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida.
The violators have been ordered to repay Bandyopadhyay the equivalent amount, with interest accruing until the balance is paid in full.
Due to the blockchain, the identities and locations of these digital thieves remain unknown. In the case from the previous week, Judge Bloom permitted them to be served via NFT using the same on-chain addresses they had used to steal from Bandyopadhyay.
The hackers duped the plaintiff into connecting his Coinbase wallet to a fictitious liquidity mining project, and then transferred funds from the wallet to their own. Following a series of transfers, the funds ultimately landed in a Binance Exchange Pool.
Judge Bloom’s decision that NFTs were an acceptable method of legal notification for these defendants marks the first time a federal court in the United States has authorized service of process via NFT.
Before last week’s ruling, a New York county court had earlier in the year authorized the practice. In the summer of 2017, a U.K. court determined that NFTs are a valid means of informing anonymous, on-chain defendants.
The development marks a turning point for legal frameworks that are struggling to keep up with the proliferation of novel criminal activities made possible by blockchain technology. Frequently, crypto-savvy hackers construct elaborate networks of fictitious businesses in order to convince unwary victims to link their wallets, which are then swiftly emptied. In an ecosystem where even well-known, honest actors frequently operate under the radar, it can be difficult to distinguish between trustworthy and untrustworthy actors.
Once digital funds and assets are stolen, it becomes more difficult to recover them.
Content Source: decrypt.co
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