August 17, 2021
Binance, which has recently suffered from intense regulatory scrutiny, has one more problem to worry about.
The world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange has been ordered by London’s High Court to help identify and freeze the accounts of hackers responsible for a $2.6 million heist, according to Yahoo!Finance.
A judge granted the request of AI company Fetch.ai for Binance to take necessary action to help identify the perpetrators and locate and seize the stolen assets.
It marks Binance’s first public involvement with a case of this nature and could become a measure of the efforts of the court system’s attempts to tackle fraud and theft on cryptocurrency exchanges.
Previously, Binance noted it was committed to complying with appropriate local rules wherever it operates and would expand its international compliance teams to work closely with local regulators.
Binance said it was keen to cooperate with the case.
“We can confirm that we are helping Fetch.ai in the recovery of assets,” a spokesperson said.
“Binance routinely freezes accounts that are identified as having suspicious activity occurring in line with our security policies and commitment to ensuring that users are protected while using our platform.”
Fetch.ai is both incorporated in England and Singapore and builds and develops blockchain-based AI projects.
Fetch claims the perpetrators hacked their way into its cryptocurrency accounts on Binance on June 6. Account restrictions meant the hackers were unable to remove the funds. Instead, the assets were allegedly sold to a linked third party at a fraction of their value within an hour of the hack taking place.
