News linked to both this project and an event.
According to the Xinhua Daily, police in Ya’an City, Sichuan Province, have cracked a cross-border online pornography-related criminal case. The pornographic manga website “Xiuxiu Seman” lured adolescents into making frequent small-value top-ups for profit. The site recorded over 100 million page views, with illicit transaction volumes reaching more than RMB 12 million (approximately USD 1.66 million). Police investigations revealed that domestic suspects received illicit funds through multiple corporate and personal accounts, and then transferred the proceeds overseas via virtual currencies under the direction of Li Mouwu and others. Recently, the Ya’an City Mingshan District People’s Court issued a first-instance verdict, sentencing five defendants to prison terms for crimes including profiting from disseminating obscene materials and aiding information network-related criminal activities. Judicial authorities are still investigating the overseas financial backers behind the website.
Odaily News Court documents released by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York reveal that Google security engineer Michele Spagnuolo has been arrested and charged with using material non-public information to place bets on Polymarket related to Google user search results. According to the court documents, Spagnuolo used internal Google tools to track the list of the most searched-for individuals in 2025 and transferred approximately 3.8 million USDC to a Polymarket address. His associated account, AlphaRaccoon, placed bets on D4vd becoming one of the most searched-for individuals in late November just hours after accessing the internal tools. The documents further allege that AlphaRaccoon transferred 5 million USDC.e from a Polymarket account to a wallet, and subsequently moved the funds through exchange services and privacy tools, with some of the funds ultimately ending up in an account at a payment processing institution in Italy. Spagnuolo is accused of profiting over $1.2 million from these transactions and currently faces charges of commodities fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering.
the Cangshan District People's Procuratorate of Fuzhou City disclosed that a man was sentenced to 12 years and 7 months in prison and fined 300,000 yuan for stealing 4 Bitcoins from another person and illegally profiting approximately 900,000 yuan. The verdict was upheld in the second instance.According to the case details, at the end of 2020, a person surnamed Wang commissioned a person surnamed Lin to assist in liquidating his Bitcoin holdings. While accessing Wang's Bitcoin wallet hard drive and computer, Lin stole the wallet's "private key" and related data, transferred 4 Bitcoins to his own account, and subsequently sold them off for profit. In 2024, Wang discovered the asset anomaly and reported it to the police, leading to Lin's arrest.The procuratorate stated that although current Chinese regulations clarify that virtual currencies do not hold legal tender status, Bitcoin possesses value, manageability, and transferability, which aligns with the general characteristics of "property" under criminal law. Therefore, it constitutes an object of property crimes, and related infringing actions will also be subject to criminal liability.
: Bitcoin financial services company Swan Bitcoin (along with its operating entity Electric Solidus Inc. named as defendants) is facing a lawsuit filed in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware, with claims approaching $1 billion.The lawsuit was filed by PCT Litigation Trust, aiming to recover crypto assets related to the 2023 collapse of Prime Trust. The plaintiff accuses Swan of using "material non-public information" to transfer funds out of Prime Trust before its failure, thereby avoiding significant losses.According to the court filing, Swan had transferred assets including approximately 11,992 Bitcoin (currently valued at around $917 million) out of Prime Trust before it filed for bankruptcy, along with roughly $22.4 million in fiat currency, $5 million in stablecoins, and 91,444 XRP tokens.The plaintiff also alleges that Swan had ties to a senior executive at Prime Trust, who also served as an external consultant for Swan. This individual is suspected of providing Swan with information prior to regulatory meetings, thereby helping the company withdraw its assets early.Swan Bitcoin responded, stating that the relevant assets belong to client trust property and should not be used for bankruptcy liquidation, expressing confidence that the court will ultimately support its position. (Decrypt)
Odaily News: Margaret Garnett, a U.S. District Judge in Manhattan, has approved Aave's asset recovery proposal, allowing the transfer of approximately $71 million in ETH previously frozen on Arbitrum and linked to North Korean-linked attacks, to a wallet controlled by Aave LLC, while preserving the legal claims of terrorism victim plaintiffs over the funds. The ruling also amended the earlier freeze notice against the Arbitrum DAO, permitting the transfer to be executed through an on-chain governance vote and exempting those who propose, vote on, or participate in the transfer from liability under the freeze order. The transfer is still subject to an official vote by Arbitrum's on-chain governance. (CoinDesk)
According to Decrypt, an anonymous cryptocurrency whale filed a lawsuit against Coinbase this week in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, accusing the exchange of refusing to return over $55 million worth of DAI stablecoins stolen in a phishing attack in 2024. The plaintiff claims to have engaged multiple on-chain investigation firms to trace the funds, ultimately identifying that the stolen assets flowed into a Coinbase account. Coinbase confirmed in December 2024 that it had frozen the relevant assets but refused to return them, citing the need for a court order. As of today—more than a year and a half after the incident—the victim has still not recovered the assets and has therefore turned to litigation. The attack was carried out by hackers using the “Inferno Drainer” tool to spoof the DeFi Saver login page; after the victim inadvertently interacted with the fake page, their wallet was fully compromised by the attackers.
According to Cointelegraph, U.S. law firm Gerstein Harrow LLP has filed an application with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York seeking a temporary restraining order and three writs of execution to prevent the Arbitrum DAO from transferring 30,766 ETH (valued at approximately $73 million) frozen following the Kelp vulnerability. The firm argues that its clients obtained default judgments against North Korea in U.S. courts in 2010, 2015, and 2016, entitling them to roughly $877 million in compensation—and contends that the stolen ETH constitutes North Korean-linked assets that should be used to satisfy those judgments. Kelp DAO suffered a $292 million hack on April 18; the attacker was identified as TraderTraitor, a subgroup of the North Korean state-sponsored hacking group Lazarus Group. Aave Labs previously proposed unfreezing the seized funds and transferring them into the “DeFi United” fund to compensate rsETH holders—but this legal action by Gerstein Harrow may significantly delay compensation for victims. Members of the Arbitrum DAO community have criticized the move, arguing it shifts the burden of North Korea’s debts onto another set of victims, thereby exacerbating the original harm. Gerstein Harrow had previously pursued litigation related to the 2023 Heco Bridge hack involving Teth
According to Fox News, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), in collaboration with law enforcement agencies in Dubai, China, and Thailand, conducted a large-scale multinational joint operation that successfully dismantled at least nine overseas cryptocurrency scam centers and arrested 276 suspects, involving millions of dollars in illicit funds. In this operation, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California filed federal charges of wire fraud and money laundering against six suspects. Those charged include nationals from Myanmar and Indonesia, who operated scam organizations under names such as “Sanduo Group” and “Giant Company.” Dubai police arrested 275 suspects, while the Royal Thai Police apprehended one additional fugitive. These scam networks employed the “pig-butchering” scheme—building fake friendships or romantic relationships to gain victims’ trust, then luring them into transferring funds to fraudulent cryptocurrency investment platforms, after which the proceeds were laundered and transferred to criminal accounts. This operation aligns with the executive order signed by Trump on March 6, 2026, aimed at combating overseas criminal networks that exploit U.S. citizens. The FBI’s dedicated initiative, “Operation Level Up,” has notified approximately 9,000 victims and recovered roughly $562 million in losses for U.S. citizens. The FBI urges victims to report incidents through the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3).
According to South Korean media outlet Newsis, a man in his twenties, who worked as a company finance staff member in South Korea, was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment by the Busan District Court for embezzling corporate funds to invest in cryptocurrencies. The court determined that between 2021 and 2025, he transferred company funds into his personal account approximately 680 times, embezzling a total of roughly 570 million KRW, which he used for cryptocurrency trading, overseas travel, and daily expenses. He also forged certificates of corporate deposit trust balances to conceal his crimes.
Odaily News: The U.S. Department of Justice disclosed that Carmine Agnello, the grandson of gangster John Gotti, was sentenced to 15 months in prison for fraudulently obtaining approximately $1.1 million in COVID-19 relief funds and investing part of the money into cryptocurrency businesses.Prosecutors stated that between April 2020 and November 2021, Agnello obtained multiple relief loans from the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) through false applications, claiming they were for the operation of his auto parts and recycling business. In reality, he diverted the funds for personal use, with about $420,000 invested in cryptocurrency-related investments.The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York said this conduct occurred during the peak of the pandemic and constituted a serious misuse of government aid funds. Agnello is expected to begin serving his prison sentence on July 1.Furthermore, official data shows that fraud related to U.S. pandemic relief funds is severe. The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) estimates that approximately $135 billion (about 15% of the total) flowed into fraudulent activities. (CoinDesk)
Cryptocurrency law firm Burwick Law has filed a federal class-action lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) against defendants including Walters—the creator of AI16Z and ELIZAOS—alleging violations of consumer protection laws, false advertising, and unjust enrichment. Court documents indicate that the defendants allegedly leveraged the brand reputation of Andreessen Horowitz (“a16z”) to market the project, launching the AI16Z token on Solana on October 24, 2024, later rebranding it as ELIZAOS. The complaint alleges that the project claimed to deploy autonomous AI agents capable of making investment decisions, whereas operations were in fact manually conducted—and no revenue was generated during the litigation period. On January 2, 2025, the token reached an all-time high price of approximately $2.47, with a market capitalization exceeding $2.6 billion; it subsequently collapsed amid large-scale sell-offs by major holders. On-chain data shows that the most profitable trader realized gains of roughly $39 million.