MintPal Vows to Fight Former Moolah CEO in Court
The owners of the troubled digital currency exchange MintPal are moving to take legal action against former Moopay LTD CEO Alex Green.
Green, who was once known as Ryan Kennedy, is accused of stealing as much as 4,000 BTC ($1.3m at press time) in user funds from MintPal following its failed relaunch and the subsequent collapse of Moopay (more commonly known as Moolah), which assumed control of the exchange this summer. Much of the stolen bitcoin was held in cold storage under the control of Green, according to the MintPal leadership.
In the past two weeks, numerous allegations tying Green to past fraudulent behavior have emerged. Green has denied engaging in unlawful behavior, but has admitted to changing his name from Ryan Kennedy to Alex Green.
Ferdous Bhai, a major shareholder and director of the holding company that owns MintPal said: “How messy [the process] gets really depends on how cooperative Ryan is. The altcoins that didn’t migrate to MintPal V2 – we estimate that to be around 1,000 BTC worth – we can return to users. The other missing amounts, including missing bitcoins, are still with Ryan and hopefully we can get him to cough up those as well. Then, we can return the bitcoins to customers and rebuild, rebrand from there.”
According to the document shared by Bhai, the partners saw promise in the original MintPal platform and the team at Moolah working under Green. Given MintPal’s troubled security history but past success in building trading volume, the opportunity seemed legitimate.
He wrote:“At the time, [Green] was one of the ‘good guys’ in my book. I had participated in Moolah’s crowdfunding, donated to his charities and I was looking to invest more in cryptocurrency space. I believed that MintPal had the potential to be one of the top businesses in the cryptocurrency space and we had the opportunity to acquire it relatively cheaply. So I jumped at the opportunity.”
Bhai conceded, both in his statement and in conversation with CoinDesk, that MintPal’s future as a digital currency exchange is far from certain. What comes next, he said, is an effort to bring charges against Green and regain control of the funds previously held in cold storage.
He wrote in the statement:“At this point, we have enough evidence of identity theft, fraud and theft to bring Ryan to justice and perhaps recover the stolen funds for our customers by liquidating Ryan’s assets, but I have already depleted my financial resources by now to support the ongoing legal costs personally.”
Bhai explained that the team hopes to crowdfund $25,000 to help pay for the legal effort.
Source: coindesk-MintPal Vows to Fight Former Moolah CEO in Court
