Tether has submitted a motion to exclude Roche Freedman from the class action lawsuit. In addition, the legal counsel for Bitfinex and Tether has requested that the law firm ensure that any defendant-issued papers have not been shared and either return them or destroy them.
After filing a petition to be removed as counsel in the case, Tether (USDT)-issuer Tether is demanding that the law firm Roche Freedman be "terminated" from its role as counsel for the Bitfinex and Tether class-action lawsuit.
The rise of the dispute
Elliot Greenfield of Debevoise & Plimpton LLP filed a request for a court order on Wednesday on behalf of the legal firm that represents Tether and Bitfinex. The motion asked the court to remove Roche's law company from the case altogether and to confirm that they have either returned or destroyed all defendant-issued papers and have not shared them with any third party, including Ava Labs. Greenfield also demanded that Roche's law firm certify that they have returned or destroyed all.
The request comes shortly after Roche submitted a notice of motion to withdraw from the Tether class-action lawsuit amid the ongoing fallout from a recent CryptoLeaks expose. The expose alleged that a United States lawyer had a secret pact to "harm" Ava Labs competitors in exchange for AVAX tokens and Ava Labs equity.
Greenfield’s remarks
Greenfield said Roche's remarks that were published on the CryptoLeaks website expressed a "severe worry" that Kyle Roche "may be abusing the discovery process" and "misusing material" he obtains via litigation.
Greenfield said that the issues are very pertinent to the case, and he highlighted the fact that Roche Freedman LLP "has issued a series of document requests seeking material that has no obvious relation to the claims and defenses in this complaint."
Greenfield stated that the withdrawal of Kyle Roche from the case "does little, if anything, to address the serious issues regarding the potential misuse of discovery:" Even though Kyle Roche has filed motions to remove himself and others from the case, Greenfield stated that the withdrawal of Roche "does little, if anything, to address the serious issues."
Greenfield further said that the "removal would not disadvantage Plaintiffs" since the plaintiffs would continue to be represented by "two other major and experienced companies," namely Selendy Gay Elsberg PLLC as well as Schneider Wallace Cottrell Konecky LLP.
The class-action complaint that was brought against Tether and Bitfinex in 2019 said that the defendants manipulated the cryptocurrency market by creating unbacked USDT "in an attempt to convey to the system that there was a massive, organic desire for cryptocurrency assets." In the last few days, Roche has withdrawn from the cases that it was involved in against Binance, Solana, Tron, BitMEX, Nexo, and Dfinity.
Exposure of Roche Freedman's 'intoxicating' links to Avalanche/Ava Labs
The legal company that represented Ira Kleiman in his unsuccessful action against Dr. Craig Wright has been exposed for launching nuisance lawsuits against Ava Labs' blockchain competitors.
Roche Freedman is well-known for initiating class action lawsuits against blockchain businesses because they deceived customers by marketing unregistered securities as tokens. Videos published by Crypto Leaks indicate that these lawsuits have nothing to do with protecting common 'crypto' investors. Instead, it seems that the cases are meant to cripple Ava Labs' competitors, so increasing the value of AVAX, of which Roche Freedman's partners were handed substantial amounts in addition to an ownership share in Ava Labs.
Final Thoughts
Roche explains in one video that his company shared office space with Ava Labs beginning in 2019 and that Roche personally resided with Ava Labs co-founder and chief operating officer Kevin Sekniqi after Roche's relocation from New York to Miami. Roche adds that he trusts Gün and Sekniqi "like brothers" and that they have "the same interest."
According to the Decentralized Engineering Corporation (DEC), the company behind the Solana-based protocol TRIP that enables mobility-based applications, the ride-sharing industry is poised for another paradigm shift, with Web3 protocols permitting new companies and drivers to bid for rides using a matching algorithm.
According to DEC, companies and passengers can collaborate and compete in a common economy on the TRIP platform. The protocol also gives the most active participants a role in its governance, which benefits both drivers and customers.
The first service intended to operate on TRIP is Teleport, a decentralized ride-sharing program run by parent company DEC that is set to start in December. DEC announced a $9 million seed round funded by Foundation Capital and Road Capital on October 27.
The Foundation Capital and Road Capital co-led the seed round, with participation from Thursday Ventures, 6th Man Ventures, 305 Ventures, and Common Metal. Uber's third-ever employee, engineer Ryan McKillen, as well as social media influencer Jake Paul, Flexport founder Ryan Petersen, and Farcaster co-founder Dan Romero, are among the individual strategic investors.
according to Paul Bohm, CEO of DEC and founder of Teleport, Uber "basically operates a monopoly—incredibly it's concentrated." According to Bloomberg data, Uber controls an estimated 72% of the US ride-sharing market as of June.
TRIP is Aimed to be a Decentralised Protocol
According to Paul Bohm, CEO of DEC and founder of Teleport, ridesharing giant Uber "basically operates a monopoly—incredibly it's centralized." According to Bloomberg data, Uber offers the infrastructure that links drivers and riders and takes a big share of the fee, garnering an estimated 72% of the US ride-sharing market in June.
TRIP is intended to be a decentralized protocol into which multiple app developers may plug to create a marketplace that links drivers and passengers, all without the need for centralized power at the center.
Bohm believes that this will encourage both cooperation and competition, encouraging players to deviate from the paradigm of behemoths such as Uber and Lyft while also driving companies to innovate to produce the greatest app based on a shared economy.
DEC will utilize the seed financing to accelerate its implementation in the coming months, with Teleport and TRIP demonstrating at Solana's Breakpoint conference in Lisbon in November and Art Basel Miami in December.
According to Bohm, Uber is "atrocious" at delivering service around large-scale events, thus the plan for Teleport's initial test is to give "table stakes or higher quality."
He believes that full implementation of the service will take six to nine months, with further decentralization envisaged as DEC seeks to validate the idea. According to Bohm, certain companies and automobile fleet owners have shown interest in using TRIP to develop their apps, similar to what DEC has done with Teleport.
The additional funds, according to Bohm, will be used to "launch TRIP permanently in specific cities." It will also assist the corporation in meeting its decentralization goal.
Riders in the TRIP ecosystem can pay with USD Coin on Solana and fiat currency through Apple Pay thanks to a blockchain-based mechanism, while drivers can accept the stablecoin as payment directly to their bank accounts or have it transferred into their wallet.
"By turning ride-sharing into a protocol and Teleport is constructing what Uber could not do in 2010, and what Uber should be building now," said Ryan McKillen, a former Uber employee and one of the seed round investors. Thursday Ventures, 6th Man Ventures, 305 Ventures, and Common Metal were among the other investors.
Conclusion
TRIP is not the first attempt to construct a decentralized ridesharing service, but Bohm believes that recent developments in decentralized finance (DeFiDeFi) have yielded token models that can make this go-round work for all players.
According to Precedence Research, the ride-sharing sector would be worth $344.4 billion by 2030. According to Statista, Uber is the most popular ride-sharing app in the world, with 93 million people using it every month.
Thodex suddenly stopped trading in April 2021 due to an unspecified outside investment. It needed a four- to five-day pause in trading to work.
But after one day, Özer said that the company had been forcefully stopped trading due to cyberattacks. Though, claimed that customer funds were safe. That time, he promised to return the investors' capital shortly.
But on the same day of that claim, 62 people were confined by Turkish police. All the systems and computers of that company were seized. Also, accounts were frozen.
The Suspicion Raised :
After that incident, Özer flew to Albania to get rid of administrative activity. Though, the Turkish govt. was getting ready to have him extradited. The manhunt continued for months.
Later, Özer was found in Vlorë. Vlorë is a coastal city, the third most crowded region in Albania. Özer's identity was marked and confirmed through biometric documents.
In April 2021, it was claimed that Thodex had transferred $125 million in Bitcoin to Kraken. Kraken is a U.S. exchange. Thodex had transferred the amount before it closed. Whitestream, the Blockchain tracking firm that discovered the incident. It was said that it appeared to be a “cash out operation,” and executives stole customer funds.
The Govt. Steps :
The government of the country has expressed concern about high crypto uptake in the country. The govt. aimed to pass a bill seeking to establish new rules for the crypto industry.
Thodex was unable to access its digital assets due to the trading platform abruptly halted trading. The platform is filled with fraud allegations and thousands of criminal complaints.
Additionally, the platform shared a statement on its website this week. According to the statement, it would be closed for four to five days as a sale process is taking place.
According to the post, their services will be closed for about five working days until the share transfer completes. However, users do not need to worry about their investments.
Before that statement, the trading was considered the first halt for "six hours of planned maintenance work.”
But the users who were unable to withdraw their capital or access their accounts took to Twitter voicing the concern that they may have been scammed.
Defendant Statements Of The Founder :
Existing in the market since 2017, Thodex claimed that "negative” media reports regarding the company were not the truth.
It claimed that the Global prominent banks and funds, whose names they were going to announce when the agreement process will be completed, have been eager to invest in their company and even the companies proposed a partnership for a long time.
According to them, for that process, the transactions need to be stopped temporarily and the sale process required completion.
However, according to the primary assessment by police, Thodex CEO Faruk Fatih Özer had flown from Istanbul Airport. He is suspected to have fled to Thailand. He had with him $2 billion worth of digital assets. He has stopped all his social media accounts for safety as the reports say.
Later, Özer did not continue his silence. He published a new statement through the Thodex Twitter account.
Rejecting the allegations, Özer said that in the platform where approximately 700,000 users conduct crypto trading. So, the platform has never exploited or done any fraud to anyone, and nor will it in the future.
He also explained that when the company had undergone a cyberattack in 2018, it had gone through a total TL 25 million loss. But it never intends to fill the blank space through illegal activities. He added the platform has recently gone through "unusual fluctuations” in company accounts that took place during the almost three-month-long partnership negotiations.
ZachXBT, a well-known on-chain investigator, claims that Monkey Drainer, a phishing scammer, has stolen over 700 ETH (equal to $700,000) worth of cryptocurrency and non-fungible tokens in the last 24 hours, amounting to about $1 million.
How did the Monkey Drainer Scam?
According to ZachXBT, the two biggest victims, 0x02a and 0x626, lost a total of $370,000 after approving transactions on phishing websites controlled by the serial fraudster. A total amount of $150,000 worth of non-fungible tokens (NFT) were apparently lost by 0x02a, including 1 Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) collection, 1 CloneX, 36,000 USDC, and 12 additional NFT.
In the last few weeks, the suspected scammer has been successful in tricking several victims. The researcher claims that the amount of money stolen in the scam has exceeded $3.5 million and is continuing to rise.
Over 7,300 transactions have been performed by the hacker throughout his several months of operation.
APY, BMI, SHOPX, XED, and PMON, among other low-cap projects, were allegedly promoted by well-known crypto influencer Lark Davis before being dumped on the community's uninformed users, according to ZachXBT. He allegedly earned $1 million as a result.
Both of these victims were only a few of the numerous people who had their money taken by Monkey Drainer. According to a tweet from ZachXBT, more than $3.5 million has been stolen in total, and the figure is growing daily.
ZachXBT advised to the users to exercise "extreme caution" before linking their wallets to untrusted websites and signing transactions.
However, ZachXBT discovered a new phishing scheme in August when victims lost more than $2.5 million worth of NFTs. Five individuals associated with the BAYC collecting scheme were indicted in Paris earlier in October.
Phishing scams sometimes include criminals disseminating links to websites that pose as legitimate initiatives or businesses to trick users into divulging private information by promising a thrilling purchasing opportunity or a no-cost promotion.
The Monkey Drainer has been associated with four specific addresses, including the monkey-drainer.eth address.
Web3 Security Community Wallet Guard Responded
The blockchain-based Web3 security network Chainabuse now displays a lengthy series of reports about airdrop frauds, NFT scams, and phishing assaults when searching these addresses.
A handful of the reported cases are phony Aptos Airdrops, a false Wolf Game, Bored Ape Yacht Club marketplace, and airdrop frauds via the Astrobot Society discord channel.
ZachXBT's Twitter thread received a response from the Web3 security community Wallet Guard, which claimed to have "seen multiple additional mint sites recently constructed" with Monkey Drainer on the backend, including a bogus Garbage Friends whitelist link that led to a phishing website.
In the last few years, ZachXBT has established himself as a reputable independent blockchain investigator and exposed numerous instances of criminal activity in the industry.
Christophe Durand, the deputy head of France's national cyber unit, even acknowledged ZachXBT's efforts earlier this month for aiding authorities in locating five people accused of using phishing to steal NFTs valued at $2.5 million.
Conclusion
Even though 2022 has been a challenging year for the cryptocurrency market, phishing attempts continue to target cryptocurrency on social media. Phishing attacks rose from 106 to 290 in the second quarter, a 170% rise, according to blockchain analysis company CertiK.
The Coin Rise claimed that in a more recent event, hackers chose to target several FTX users and were successful in obtaining cryptocurrency worth $1.26. In previous incidents, hackers have taken control of Gate.io, an exchange platform's official Twitter account. The three biggest social media hubs for cryptocurrency frauds are now Discord, Telegram, and Twitter.
Like many industries, the crypto industry is also not free from vices that affect its overall functioning and output. Therefore, certain checks and steps are necessary to prevent it from degrading to a higher extent. In the past few years, several such steps have been taken to keep the crypto industry in check. However, there have been various such instances wherein crypto mixers have also become a matter of concern.
In a recent report, the assistant secretary of the Treasury Department has said that putting sanctions on crypto miners can be of huge help. It can prevent the evil systems prevalent in it such as money laundering. It can spread across various countries such as North Korea, Russia, and Iran.
How can sanctions on cryptocurrency mixers be of help?
Elizabeth Rosenberg stated in a recent report that the enforcing of sanctions on entities such as crypto miners can be of huge help to the Government. It can be the best way to prevent foreign countries from making use of the crypto platform for various illegal activities. She, being the assistant secretary for terrorist financing and financial crimes came up with this suggestion as a preventive measure to make the digital currency platform a safer space for all.
Further comments on the crypto mixer sanction
There have been various steps taken towards the fulfillment of the above-mentioned goal. In one of the recent hearings of the Senate Banking, it has been quite vividly elaborated how the inclusion of various crypto mixers in the group of Specially designated nationals can work in favor of the US in letting foreign countries know the steps it is taking to prevent exploitation or breach of sanctions. These crypto mixers include blender.io, Tornado cash, etc. It is a step that has been deemed necessary to an extent that it has become almost mandatory.
Role of sanctions in preventing money laundering
It has been also been stated by Rosenberg that with the use of sanctions if prevention of usage of mixers for illicit activities can be encouraged, then it should and must be used likewise. It would be the best way to indicate or represent that the entity does not respond well to any sort of money laundering and prevent criminals from engaging in such activities. Does not matter which group or country they belong to, a criminal should be taken action against without any further consideration.
Some more information on the sanction on crypto mixers
Even though there have been several oppositions to this particular decision, it has still stood strong and held its ground. Its motive and aim have been questioned time and again for it, as per the views of the opposition, could bring about disastrous consequences. Several well-reputed entities like Coinbase even went as further as threatening to charge a lawsuit against the government authority for the step they have taken, especially for imposing sanctions on Tornado cash.
Conclusion
This particular government entity has directed its initiative towards those trying to use various Bitcoin assets and aimed at different Bitcoin addresses. These addresses included groups from Russia as well as Iran. However, it later made it clear that the Treasury does not aim at putting any sort of regulations on users which would affect the sharing of Tornado Cash's code on different websites. This declaration was made by the treasury in between the unrest and lack of clarity that is prevalent among crypto users for some time now. Needless to say, the crypto market being volatile is susceptible to changes that may or may not be accepted by each and everyone associated with it or affected by it.
