Gemini in a lawsuit again, for the second time in the week, this time the claim is for $36 million

Gemini in a pool of legal complications.

Gemini, which happens to be one of the popular cryptocurrency exchanges is in a pool of legal complications. Two cases have been registered against Gemini in the last week or so. In the first case, CFTC sued Gemini, over bitcoins futures case from 2017. CFTC (Commodity Futures Trading Commission) sued Gemini Trust Company. The allegations were that the company’s staff misled the federal regulator during Gemini’s 2017 bitcoin futures contract. In addition to the existing legal complications, Gemini was sued by IRA for onboarding a system with a single point of failure. The single point of failure actually was the main cause of theft which helped the criminals successfully rob $36 million in IRA customers funds.

IRA’s claims against Gemini.

The IRA Financial Trust sued Gemini for the February hack, which lead to the theft of $36 million from the customers of IRA. IRA filed a lawsuit against Gemini asking to reimburse IRA customers. The legal complications seem to increase as the day passes by for Gemini.

IRA, which happens to be a platform for self-directed retirement and pension accounts, states in the lawsuit that, Gemini failed in having proper safeguard procedures in place to protect the customer’s crypto assets. They also claimed that, Gemini failed to freeze the accounts in time to avoid the theft.

Hackers get into IRA and steal millions.

According to the lawsuit filed by IRA against Gemini, on February 8 2022, the hackers falsely alarmed the cops about a kidnapping in the IRA’s South Dakota Offices to the police department to divert the cops from the actual heist. Then via the unencrypted emails between Gemini and IRA, utilized the master key which was linked to the accounts of the customers of IRA, combined the funds from all sub-accounts into one single account and withdrew the amount. Due to the single failure system’s presence and the hackers accessed the master key, the anti-fraud systems in the company didn’t go off.

Conclusion:

In the conclusion, the major point to note here is that, the theft happened and the major losers were the account holders of IRA. Even though IRA has filed a lawsuit against Gemini, it is probable that Gemini might walk out of the case as the down coming of the system was known to IRA. Yes, it is true that Gemini should have been more diligent while handling funds which were valued over millions. But, whether Gemini is the only guilty here, and whether IRA will win the lawsuit, only future investigations in the case can answer.