Crypto platform Binance ordered to release account info linked to €186,000 dating scam
The court in The Hague ordered the cryptocurrency platform Binance to release the name and address details of an account holder linked to a dating app scam in which a woman lost 186,000 euros. The court also ordered Binance to keep the account frozen until the woman decided whether or not to take legal steps against the person behind it.
The woman began talking with someone through the dating app, and over the course of the summer “she was subtly persuaded” to “invest in cryptocurrencies,” the court summarized. She transferred a total of 186,000 euros in cryptocurrency spread out over six transactions to a platform she believed to be legitimate.
The well-known scam is often referred to as pig butchering because the victim’s confidence is earned before they are slaughtered by the theft. The woman filed a police report at the end of August detailing the alleged scam as a case of investment fraud.
She hired Dutch digital forensic firm DataExpert which traced a portion of the woman’s stolen funds to an account held by Binance. “On September 6, 2024, the plaintiff requested Binance to freeze the user account tracked by DataExpert, to provide a statement of the assets affected by the freeze, and to disclose the name and address of the user in question. Binance subsequently suspended the account in question internally. The person entitled to the user account has not been heard from since then,” the court stated.
“She was persuaded in a sophisticated manner to invest in cryptocurrencies by someone she met through a dating platform,” the woman’s attorney noted. Even if the account holder is not responsible for the scam, her legal representative suggested she will pursue recovery of her assets from the account, and damages, with a court order.
While Binance was willing to cooperate with suspending trading on the account while the matter is handled, it declined to share the account information without a court order, the company said. “It has explained that, as a neutral third party, it does not want to share personal data of customers without judicial review and/or permanently freeze and/or transfer a customer’s assets to the claimant,” the court summarized.
The court in The Hague ruled in the woman’s favor. Binance was ordered to give up the full name and address of the person or entity associated with the account within 14 days, as well as a complete overview of all assets in the account so that the woman could decide whether it made sense to pursue legal steps against them.
“The woman has sufficiently substantiated that cryptocurrency stolen from her can be found in the account. She has suffered significant damage due to fraud and she has no other option for discovering the customer’s identity,” the court said. According to the court, the woman’s interest in being able to litigate against this customer outweighs the customer’s privacy interests in this case.
The cryptocurrency platform also has to freeze the account for at least four weeks while the plaintiff decides whether to file summary proceedings against the account holder. Binance was not ordered to pay for the woman’s legal fees.
