Man sues Benedict and Oliver’s parents over million dollar Bitcoin theft

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Photo: Martin Bureau (Getty Images)

In 2018, a Colorado man collected roughly $ 1 million worth of bitcoin in his digital wallet. After three years of working with investigators he says he traced the crime to two Brits named Benedict and Oliver (really) and now their parents are on trial alongside the defendants.

As Krebs on Security first reported, the victim, Andrew Schober, had brought a lawsuit against the families of Benedict Thompson and Oliver Read, who were minors at the time of the theft but are currently studying computer science at UK universities , as a kind of last resort. According to court documents filed in U.S. federal court in Colorado, Schober only found the two alleged culprits after spending months working with experts in the crypto transaction tracking world. By the time Schober was able to track them down, he had spent around $ 10,000 on various detectives, according to the complaint.

The lawsuit says these investigators were able to trace the million dollar theft to a fairly basic cybersecurity snafu. Investigators allegedly discovered that when Schober downloaded a certain crypto-wallet app called Electrum Atom, it came with a sneaky program designed to snoop on his computer’s clipboard. When Schober attempted to transfer 16.4 bitcoins (worth around $ 767,000) by copying and pasting his digital wallet address, the malware replaced that long string of numbers and letters with a chain controlled by teenagers, says the lawsuit.

Here, Mr Schober believed he was only communicating with his own cryptocurrency wallet, the lawsuit says. But because of the malware, either Benedict or Oliver or both intercepted and altered communications between Mr. Schober and the Bitcoin blockchain.

To be fair, the complaint filed by Schober can be seen as a last resort. Before moving on to civil action, the Krebs report shows, he actually contacted the teenager’s parents directly to seek repayment of his assets.

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It looks like your son used malware to steal money from people online, the letter to parents read. We have all the evidence needed to implicate his guilt […] ask him yourself. He might have thought he was playing a harmless joke, but it had serious consequences for my life.

A screenshot of the letter Schober sent to the two families. Screenshot: Shoshana Wodinsky (Gizmodo)

According to the lawsuit, this letter met with radio silence so Schober filed a civil lawsuit last May. And this month, he finally got a response from one of the parents, Hazel Wells. She filed a motion on August 9 asking to represent herself and her son, helpfully including a screenshot of the letter that was sent to each of the parents.

Notably, none of the families deny that their children stole around $ 1 million worth of bitcoin from an unsuspecting man in multiple countries. Instead, their argument is that the statute of limitations has already passed; because Schober waited three years and changed to press charges against the families, they said, his claims should be dismissed.

It is not known if this will be enough for the US court to dismiss the case. Over the past year, we’ve seen a record number of major crypto hacks encounter less than satisfactory litigation. Last September, a California judge dismissed a claim for $ 200 million in damages from an investor who was hit by a SIM swap hack that cost him millions in crypto assets. And it’s not as if these hacks have since slowed down; Even this week, several reports revealed that Coinbase users were losing their platform savings as a result of fairly widespread hacks. Meanwhile, Coinbases’ customer support would have been … less than helpful. Schober may have better luck.

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