A Colorado resident went to court with a lawsuit in which he demands to oblige the parents of two underage hackers to return his 16 BTC stolen in 2018.

According to cybersecurity firm KrebsonSecurity, a man who became a victim of online fraud and lost 16 BTC filed a complaint with a Colorado court. In 2018, Andrew Schober downloaded a crypto wallet tracking app from the Reddit forum, which turned out to be malicious. After he sent 16.4552 BTC from one of his wallets to another, the malware replaced the recipient's address with the one of the scammers'. The software was allegedly created by two UK teenagers, Benedict Thompson and Oliver Reed. It took over a year to track them down.

According to filed documents, these 16 bitcoins accounted for 95% of the plaintiff's savings at the time of the theft.

Although the alleged hackers are now adults and are studying computer science at UK universities, Schober is demanding that the stolen cryptocurrency be returned from the scammers' parents. Schober's complaint alleges that the parents knew or should have known what their children were doing and that they also failed to take reasonable steps to prevent fraud.

Schober notes that he tried to contact the parents of the hackers in 2018 and 2019, but no one responded to his letters. In particular, he wrote:

“As his parents, I am appealing to you first to give him the chance to make this right, without involving law enforcement. Your son is obviously a very intelligent young man. I do not wish him to be robbed of his future, however, it would not be just to let him inflict such a damaging blow to my future.”

The defendants filed a counter-motion to dismiss the case based on a three-year statute of limitations.