The creditors of doomed crypto Mt. Gox are in a dilemma again as one Russian law firm, Zheleznikov and Partners, is claiming that it can recover a major chunk of the lost Bitcoins.
According to a Coindesk report, the law firm is sending proposals to the victims of the fiasco and claiming that it can recover an estimated 170,000 to 200,000 Bitcoins from the Russian parties who received the stolen tokens. The value of these tokens will be between $1.7 billion to $2 billion based on the current market rate, as of press time.
Once the largest Bitcoin exchange, the doom of the exchange approached when it was hacked in late 2011, resulting in the theft of 850,000 Bitcoin, then worth 450 million. This created a major dent on the books and business of the exchange and finally forced it to shut its trading operations in 2014.
The report also retailed that the law firm is asking creditors for 50 to 75 percent of the recovered amount, along with hourly fees for their legal work. The company, however, will accept Payments only in case of successful recovery.
Recovering coins from other shady parties
Per Alexander Zheleznikov, the managing partner of the law firm, a significant amount of the stolen funds from Mt. Gox landed on other doomed Russian exchanges like BTC-e and WEX.
“Our plan is to represent the Mt.Gox creditors and help them report to Russian law enforcement so that the investigators could establish the connection between the stolen funds from Mt Gox, the operations of BTC-e and WEX, using Vinnik’s case,” Zheleznikov said.
“If our assumptions of those connections are correct, the [thieves] will ultimately come forward and plead guilty, and to reduce the punishment, they will offer to recover a part of the funds. If they don’t, they will be deemed guilty by law enforcement, and then there will be a chance to sue them for damages based on the criminal case.”
Earlier, reports surfaced that Fortress Investment Group, a New York-based private equity company, was offering Mt. Gox creditors $900 per Bitcoin to purchase their claims.
