According to a complaint filed by Fisco in the Northern California District Court on September 14, 2020 and cited by CoinDesk, the Japanese exchange alleged that soon after it lost nearly 6,000 Bitcoin in the 2018 hack, the thieves sent 1,451 Bitcoin to an address belonging to Binance, which was worth USD 9.4 million at the time.
Fisco added that the criminals subsequently laundered the funds on Binanace, due to its allegedly lax know-your-customer (KYC) and anti-money laundering (AML) protocols. The thieves are claimed to have taken advantage of Binance’s policy that allowed new users to open accounts and transact on the platform in amounts less than 2 Bitcoins without needing to provide any meaningful identifying information.
The US court alleged that since Binance was notified and had ‘actual knowledge’ that the stolen funds were sent to its platform. Therefore, Fisco is demanding Binance to pay for its loss of the laundered funds in addition to other punitive damages.
Fisco also argued that the case should be brought to trial in the California court mostly because ‘critical components’ of Binance’s business are in the US state.
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