A suit filed by plaintiffs Yaroslav Kolchin, Vitaly Dubinin and BMA LLC in the Northern District of California seeks an order of attachment against the assets of the parent company of BitMEX, HDR, while claims against HDR are being litigated.
This lawsuit follows an investigation by the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission commenced on 1 October 2020 and related criminal indictments arising out of operating an unregistered trading platform and failing to implement anti-money laundering procedures.
The suit alleges that the officers sought to reduce the amount of assets that could be seized by authorities when charges were brought:
While being keenly aware of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission ... and Department of Justice ... investigations and imminently forthcoming civil and criminal charges ... Defendants Hayes, Delo and Reed looted about $440,308,400 of proceeds of various nefarious activities that took place on the BitMEX platform from Defendant HDR accounts
It...appears that the Defendants were actively and deliberately looting Defendant HDR and trying to make its funds unavailable for the collection of future judgments against it.
The exhibit to the suit did not specify how the funds were seized by the defendants.
This lawsuit was brought on behalf of the plaintiffs by Consensus law. In an email, a spokesperson for HDR global said:
Pavel Pogodin of 'Consensus Law' has filed a series of increasingly spurious claims against us, and others in the cryptocurrency sector. We will deal with this through the normal litigation process and remain entirely confident the courts will see his claims for what they are.
Mr Pogodin has a history of filing lawsuits against digital currency businesses, including FTX and Ripple.