A US federal court has accepted the validity of using information in a Bitcoin transaction to notify a defendant of a civil suit. This case, believed to be the first to see this method accepted, could help solve hundreds of cryptocurrency theft cases where the attacker’s identity is unknown.
Federal Court Admits Bitcoin On Return Is Used To Serve A Defendant
Bitcoin is starting to be accepted as a means of communication in civil cases. A federal court has accepted the validity of using the information in a Bitcoin transaction to inform an unknown suspect of his involvement in a civil suit. This case, cited by the security portal Krebsonsecurity as the first time this medium has been accepted for this task, could help expedite similar actions in which serving suspects is impractical or impossible.
The case involves a cryptocurrency theft stemming from a SIM swap performed on Ryan Dellone, a California-based healthcare worker who had $100,000 worth of cryptocurrency stolen from his Coinbase account in December 2021. In December, the federal court accepted the use of Bitcoin’s Op-Return, a field in which information can be written to notify the attackers of this case.
This was possible because Dellone’s lawyer, Ethan Mora, and a team of cryptocurrency researchers managed to track the movements of the funds into a Bitcoin wallet. Although Dellone has been informed that the Bitcoin address is part of an ongoing investigation into a cryptocurrency theft, and he does not know which party currently controls these funds, he has been allowed to serve the address by a judge in a federal court in California.
The message was embedded in a transaction that sent $100 to the wallet address and a link to a copy of the lawsuit hosted on Google Drive servers. Mark Rasch, former federal prosecutor at the U.S. Department of Justice, stated:
The courts are adapting to the new style of litigation, and that is helpful, useful and necessary.
However, not everyone agrees on the validity of this procedure. Peter Todd, a Bitcoin Core developer, stated:
This is a terrible way to serve someone. I don’t know of any wallets that display OP_Return information on incoming transactions.
What are your thoughts on using Bitcoin to serve a defendant? Tell us in the comments below.