Ramona Ang, wife of controversial cryptocurrency industry figure Craig Wright, has won a lawsuit in the UK High Court over losses she caused when the UFX exchange platform closed her account without returning her funds.
In a ruling in November, Justice Christopher Butcher granted Ang’s claim to equitable damages, saying that Cyprus defendant Reliantco – a UFX operator – failed to justify his counterclaim and “acted in breach of trust and his fiduciary duties of loyalty in dealing with the opening of the posts on Ms. account. Ang. “
Reliantco failed to argue that even though Ang opened the account in January 2017, “Dr. Wright who had subsequently executed the account ‘as a means of overcoming the effects of Defendant’s termination of Dr.’s account. Wright himself with it. She also alleged that her money was fraudulently obtained, through Wright’s involvement in the account.
Wright – who claims to be the inventor of Bitcoin – closed his account (which was opened at the same time) after the company discovered he had been accused of fraud, per the document. The $ 10,000 exchange he had deposited returned, however.
Reliantco had failed in early 2019 to move the case to Cyprus and claimed that Ang had not read the website terms and conditions. This was dismissed by Judge Andrew Baker at the time.
Ang had claimed for $ 708,857, including an initial investment set in bitcoin futures of over US $ 400,000, as well as about $ 300,000 in earnings on its open positions. He further claimed $ 600,000 in compensation for gains he would have realized had the funds not been withheld.
In addition, Ang claimed a loss of $ 1,334,163 that would have come from a plan to open a bitcoin account at the Kraken exchange and gain 3,530 bitcoin cash arising from a cryptocurrency fork from the bitcoin blockchain. Overall, the claims came to $ 2,643,020.
Judge Butcher said that while he found some of Ang’s comments over Wright’s access to her account to be “inaccurate” and “silly,” “I have found that she opened it and was its main user.”
Wright is also fighting a court case in the United States over billions in bitcoin he claims to have mined in the early days of the cryptocurrency with a former business partner, the late David Kleiman.
Editing (12:10 UTC, December 22 2020): Date corrected by judge’s ruling.