Investor Sues Coinbase Over $55M Frozen Stolen DAI

A federal court in San Francisco is considering a lawsuit filed by a Puerto Rico-based cryptocurrency investor against Coinbase, accusing the exchange of refusing to release approximately 55 million in frozen DAI stablecoins stolen in a phishing attack last year.

The plaintiff, identified in court filings as D.B., alleges that on August 20, 2024, attackers tricked him into logging into a fraudulent DeFi Saver webpage ending in .app rather than the legitimate .com domain. This allowed unauthorized access to his wallet through a tool known as Inferno Drainer, resulting in the theft of 55 million in DAI. Blockchain forensics firms Zero Shadow and Five Stones later traced portions of the stolen funds through laundering channels to a Coinbase retail account, with links to a Ukrainian national named Okelsiy Oleksandrovych Gorelikhin.

According to the complaint filed Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, Zero Shadow notified Coinbase on November 30, 2024, that the funds had been deposited into the account. Coinbase confirmed two days later that the address belonged to one of its users and implemented measures to freeze the assets and prevent their...