Man accuses wife of using CCTV cameras to steal $172 million bitcoin from his hardware wallet

The alleged theft of 2,323 bitcoin has triggered a High Court dispute testing how English property law applies to digital assets.

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What to know:

• A U.K. High Court judge has allowed a lawsuit over the alleged theft of 2,323 bitcoin, now worth about $172 million, to proceed to trial.
• The husband, Ping Fai Yuen, claims his estranged wife secretly obtained his hardware wallet recovery phrase via home CCTV and transferred the bitcoin without his permission in 2023.
• While the judge rejected his primary claim of conversion on the grounds that it traditionally applies only to physical property, the case will continue under alternative legal claims that could still enable recovery of the bitcoin.

A U.K. High Court judge allowed a lawsuit over the alleged theft of more than 2,323 bitcoin to move forward last week, in a case that highlights how the country’s legal system is still adapting traditional property law to cryptocurrency.

U.K. resident Ping Fai Yuen claimed in court filings in last week that his estranged wife, Fun Yung Li, used CCTV cameras in their home to secretly obtain the recovery phrase to his hardware wallet and transferred 2,323 bitcoin BTC$74,704.84 without his permission in August 2023, according to the docket in the High Court of England and Wales.

The bitcoin was worth just under $60 million at the time of the alleged theft 30 months ago, but is now worth roughly $172 million at the current price of just over $74,000.

The stolen crypto was stored in a Trezor cold wallet secured by a PIN. But anyone with the wallet’s 24-word recovery phrase could recreate the wallet and move the funds, the court noted. It was then transferred through several transactions and now sits across 71 blockchain addresses not held at exchanges. The funds have not moved since Dec. 21, 2023, according to the court.

Yuen said he later installed audio recording devices in the home after his daughter warned him Li was trying to take the bitcoin. After discovering the transfer, Yuen confronted Li and assaulted her. He later pleaded guilty to assault occasioning actual bodily harm and two counts of common assault in 2024. Officers seized several hardware wallets and recovery seeds during a search of her home, though authorities later took no further action pending new evidence.

Earlier, according to the filings, the wife asked the court to throw out the case, arguing that because the husband’s main claim was conversion, which in England is a legal term traditionally used when someone takes physical property, it could not apply to digital assets, such as bitcoin.

The judged agreed with the wife, but ruled the case can still proceed under different legal claims that could allow the husband to recover the bitcoin if his allegations are proven. The case will now proceed to trial, the judge said.

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