B.C. court grants production order to man defrauded out of $26 million in bitcoin

$26M in bitcoin stolen

Photo: The Canadian Press

The Law Courts building, home to the B.C. Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal, is seen in Vancouver, B.C., Nov. 23, 2023. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck

A B.C. Supreme Court judge has granted production orders to name cryptocurrency account holders to a man who claims he lost $26 million in bitcoin in a fraud connected to a person who claimed to live in Vancouver.

The court ruling posted Thursday was issued last month involving Lixiao Wang, who petitioned the court for a production order against cryptocurrency platforms Binance and Coinbase.

The ruling says Wang was contacted over WhatsApp in early 2024 by someone claiming to be a "cryptocurrency investment expert" in Vancouver, and Wang eventually transferred $26 million in bitcoin to an account on a website.

The ruling says Wang "became suspicious" when he lost access to his account and the site's support team told him to deposit millions more to perform a "security audit" required to unlock his account.

Judge Bruce Elwood's ruling says Wang hired a private investigator who traced the bitcoin transactions to accounts at Coinbase and Binance, and also determined that a B.C. driver's licence provided by the alleged fraudster to Wang was a fake.

Elwood's ruling says Wang's petition was heard without notice to the companies, and he ruled that they should hand over identifying information about the account holders as "the only practical source of the personal information identifying the wrongdoers."

Coinbase is located in the U.S. and Binance is based in the Cayman Islands. Both platforms didn't immediately respond to emailed requests for comment about the court's ruling.