A "Friendly" Crypto Family in the UK

[zasad@]

Man accuses wife of using CCTV cameras to steal $172 million bitcoin from his hardware wallet
The alleged theft of 2,323 bitcoin has triggered a High Court dispute testing how English property law applies to digital assets.
https://www.coindesk.com/business/2026/03/16/man-accuses-wife-of-using-cctv-cameras-to-steal-usd172-million-bitcoin-from-his-hardware-wallet

"A U.K. High Court judge has allowed a lawsuit over the alleged theft of 2,323 bitcoin, now worth about $172 million, to proceed to trial.
The husband, Ping Fai Yuen, claims his estranged wife secretly obtained his hardware wallet recovery phrase via home CCTV and transferred the bitcoin without his permission in 2023.
While the judge rejected his primary claim of conversion on the grounds that it traditionally applies only to physical property, the case will continue under alternative legal claims that could still enable recovery of the bitcoin."

[Orpichukwu]

I was reading about this case, which was first posted on this forum yesterday. One thing that surprises me the most about this whole issue is how the wife actually doesn't know much about Bitcoin, but still she went ahead and stole the Bitcoin, and what use is it since the Bitcoin was moved to a different address and has remained untouched since 2023 to date? Is it that she has also lost access to the wallet, or is she waiting for the court ruling first before she can go ahead and spend it? What warranted her to do such a thing is really unknown, and the daughter is even part of the witness who claimed to have witnessed some of her suspicious moves in the whole issue.

[Z-tight]

It is a crazy story that was initially posted in this thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5577596.msg66517898#msg66517898

One thing that surprises me the most about this whole issue is how the wife actually doesn't know much about Bitcoin, but still she went ahead and stole the Bitcoin,

How do you know that the ex-wife doesn't know much about BTC, nothing proves that in this story. If she actually did steal this funds, then she understands what seed phrases are, and its purpose. That is more than enough knowledge for a lot of people.

and what use is it since the Bitcoin was moved to a different address and has remained untouched since 2023 to date? Is it that she has also lost access to the wallet, or is she waiting for the court ruling first before she can go ahead and spend it?

There can be a lot of reasons why the funds have not moved, and it would not be the first time a criminal would steal BTC and keep it in a dormant address. 2,323 BTC is a lot of money, so whoever stole it has to be careful in how they move those coims, if it ever gets to a custodial platform, it would likely be confiscated. The criminal is just taking their time, probably waiting for the smoke to settle; patience is also important for criminals too.

[Orpichukwu]

One thing that surprises me the most about this whole issue is how the wife actually doesn't know much about Bitcoin, but still she went ahead and stole the Bitcoin,

How do you know that the ex-wife doesn't know much about BTC, nothing proves that in this story. If she actually did steal this funds, then she understands what seed phrases are, and its purpose. That is more than enough knowledge for a lot of people.

I don't know, but based on the statement which I will quote below, gotten from the court file, it was clear that she was not alone, as per the recording evidence, and it was also heard where she was asking the next person if there is a means to know where the coin went to and other questions which someone with Bitcoin knowledge could have ordinarily known.

A recording of 29 th July 2023 has been described on behalf of the Claimant as capturing her discussing CCTV which has been set up in the house, where the Claimant sat and hid the password, using the wallet. Reference has been made to exchanges such as

“In that case can he see that the item has been transferred to your..”

“not at this moment it is back. The Bitcoin has transferred to me but can it be seen that you have taken it?”

“Oh.it doesn’t know where it was taken to”

“oh oh oh Uh”

“it is OK. Take all of it. It is Afterwords”

“Take it first, Take it first. Fortunately”

And after discussing depositing it in the bank;

“You claim that your money was Bitcoin, such large amount, so many questions, how are you going to explain about it? Such large amount even 10 Banks which it’s not enough to put them into, you cannot explain how you obtain such large amount of money.”

https://www.iclr.co.uk/document/2026001715/2026ewhc532kb_TNA/html

[zasad@]

There can be a lot of reasons why the funds have not moved, and it would not be the first time a criminal would steal BTC and keep it in a dormant address. 2,323 BTC is a lot of money, so whoever stole it has to be careful in how they move those coims, if it ever gets to a custodial platform, it would likely be confiscated. The criminal is just taking their time, probably waiting for the smoke to settle; patience is also important for criminals too.

If the criminal has found a clever way to obtain the wallet seed phrase, I think they'll have no problem using mixers or exchanging Bitcoin for Monero.

I can assume the criminal has no way to spend these coins, so they're sitting idle for now. Until the trial is over, these coins will likely remain where they are.

[YOSHIE]

If the criminal has found a clever way to obtain the wallet seed phrase, I think they'll have no problem using mixers or exchanging Bitcoin for Monero.

Yes, I also think so, Bitcoin will be kept quiet for a while until the trial ends, I think this will get more complicated, his wife could admit things that don't make sense at the trial, because this happened after they separated, only the accusation was found to be keycomes from CCTV.

What's worse is that his wife could throw away all the Android devices she uses, laptops and so on, she only keeps the keys, so if she does that there won't be any evidence at trial and this case could end in false accusations, which is what I'm afraid will happen.

[Z-tight]

I can assume the criminal has no way to spend these coins, so they're sitting idle for now. Until the trial is over, these coins will likely remain where they are.

Yeah, since the coins hadn't moved since it was stolen, it is surely not going to move now that the case is on trial and all eyes are now on those addresses. The stolen funds is a lot of money, so it was always going to be difficult to convert those coins to fiat and spend it. But at least one thing one would have expected of the criminal is to obfuscate the traces first, break the links with the original address and that is what they have not done.

[zasad@]

This is a very high-profile case. 172 million is a huge sum. Once the coins start moving, it will attract a lot of attention to the husband and wife.
I want to say that if the court doesn't resolve this issue, these coins will remain unaccounted for/undeclared, meaning many climax elements will want to get their hands on them.
The outlook is very bleak.