An early follower of bitcoin, Charlie Shrem, denies his involvement in the theft of 5,000 bitcoins from Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, CoinDesk writes referring to a recently published court document.
According to the statement that was filed on Monday, November 5 at the District Court for the Southern District of New York, Shrem believes that the Winklevoss’ charges against him are “dead wrong." He also asked the court to unfreeze certain assets that had been frozen in accordance with a previous order.
The Winklevoss filed a lawsuit against Shrem in September, but the proceedings were remaining undiscovered until October. Brothers claim they paid Shrem $1 million to buy cryptocurrency for them in September 2012 but did not receive those 5,000 bitcoins. According to today's exchange rate, the amount indicated by them is estimated at approximately $32 million. However, at the time of the deal in 2012, Bitcoin was worth about $12.50.
Shrem writes in a response stating that the 5,000 bitcoins that were located in his wallet do not belong to him but are actually owned by another person, to whom he also volunteered to help, while Shrem never had access to this cryptocurrency.
Shrem points out that he was helping this person, (his name was changed in the public version of the documents, while the real one is still remaining sealed) to transfer 5,000 bitcoins to a cold wallet in 2012. After that, Shrem did not touch or transfer any part of those bitcoins, as he did not have access to them.
In his statement, Shrem is saying that never in his life he owned such an amount of bitcoins all at once.
Commenting on Winklevoss’ statement that he spent bitcoins on new cars, boats and real estate, Shrem notes:
“After I was released from prison, I had a net worth of less than $100,000 and worked for approximately six months at a restaurant in Pennsylvania. Since working at the restaurant, I have worked a variety of jobs that have allowed me to accumulate funds and to restore myself financially."
In support of his statements, Shrem provided the transaction extracts from the Blockchain service, which indicate that 5,000 bitcoins arrived and left the wallet associated with it on December 31, 2012.
In an effort to motivate the court to unfreeze assets, Shrem states that Winklevoss Capital Fund, the plaintiff, in this case, does not provide arguments that testified to the active actions of the defendant to implement the criminal intent.
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