A Spanish court has issued an order forcing a department within the country’s police force to investigate the possible presence of “computer fraud” on the Bittrex cryptocurrency platform. The order was placed after a Tenerife-based Bittrex user filed a complaint claiming they lost 1.3 BTC (or $ 58,000) stored on the exchange platform.
Cyber criminals accused
According to a Spanish media report, the unnamed user’s problems began when first attempts to access his funds were unsuccessful. However, after about 48 hours later, the user reports that “the money is literally gone”. The user contacted representatives from Bittrex who then “attributed the theft to the actions of cyber criminals.”
In its February 9 ruling, the Spanish court wanted the prosecution to “carry out a series of technological investigations that could identify the originator (of the theft)”. The court also wants “the Bittrex insurance company” to be involved in the investigation and the appropriate insurance policy to be provided.
Bittrex allegedly at fault
Meanwhile, the report also cites an unnamed “expert” who lists and explains the possible charges Bittrex may face due to the loss of the user. When the expert put the blame for the theft on Bittrex’s door, he said:
Before the theft on May 26, 2020, Bittrex allowed four access attempts from different IP addresses, with different locations and with different operating systems, all of which were inconsistent with what the user had been using up to that moment, and Bittrex did nothing to address this to prevent.
According to the expert, these “events occurred on three different days from France, Granada, Madrid and a city in Minnesota in the United States”.
In the meantime, the expert also notes that the cyber criminals “allegedly used a different operating system than that of the account holder”. According to the expert, this “should have raised a red safety flag for Bittrex.”
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