If you were still holding on to hope that Cryptsy would open up more wallets for withdrawals or be back to business as usual we have some bad news for you: on Monday, a US court ordered an asset freeze against the Florida-based cryptocurrency Exchange .
In the beginning of the year Cryptsy was hit with a class action lawsuit by account holders that had been denied access to their accounts and were unable to withdraw. The exchange's head, Paul "Big Vern" Vernon, later claimed that the reason was a cyber hacking attack that stole about $6 million worth of Cryptocurrencies from Cryptsy.
The lawsuit was amended recently to include Big Vern's ex-wife, Lorie Ann Nettles. According to the amended lawsuit the couple bought an expensive house in Florida and than divorced with the apparent goal of protecting their assets in case of any lawsuit even before the exchange announced the hacking.
In March Big Vern also offered some hope for affected clients as the exchange publicly released a “Reward Contract” with an anonymous hacker that goes by the alias Cryptcracker to recover the stolen 13,000 Bitcoin from Cryptsy for about 13.5% of the recovered amount. But after time has past without any update, it seems that if this was ever a possibility it will no longer make a difference as the court has now taken the assets of the firm off his hands.
The order reads: "This Court hereby takes exclusive jurisdiction and possession of the assets, of whatever kind and wherever situated, of Cryptsy for the purpose of preserving its assets. Except as otherwise specified herein, all assets of Cryptsy are frozen until further Order of this Court. Accordingly, all persons and entities with direct or indirect control over any assets of Cryptsy, other than the Receiver, are hereby restrained and enjoined from directly or indirectly transferring, setting off, receiving, changing, selling, pledging, assigning, liquidating, or otherwise disposing of, or withdrawing, such assets. This freeze shall include, but not be limited to, assets of Cryptsy that are on deposit with financial institutions such as banks, cryptocurrency exchanges, clearing firms or any other third party."
Big Vern has not made any comment on twitter yet and the exchange's website is now down.
