Filecoin Foundation launches Chinese legal inquiry into STFIL incident

Foundation senior fellow Danny O’Brien stated that the team has hired a lawyer and is attempting to determine whether police are holding the missing funds.

Filecoin Foundation, a nonprofit that promotes the development of Web3 storage protocol Filecoin, “has a lawyer in China” and is investigating the reported detention of Filecoin Liquid Staking (STFIL) team members, according to an April 13 social media post from foundation senior fellow Danny O’Brien.

Withdrawals from the STFIL protocol stopped working in early April after a developer wallet made several unscheduled upgrades and moved $23 million worth of Filecoin (FIL) tokens to an address whose owner is unknown. On April 8, the STFIL team announced that core technical members was detained by local Chinese police and that the mysterious upgrades and transfers had occurred during these detentions. This announcement left many users of STFIL wondering how they could recover funds.

In the post, O’Brien stated that “FF has a lawyer in China who has been looking into the incident,” adding that the foundation has “high confidence” that members of the STFIL team are in police custody. The foundation has not been able to confirm whether the police possess the funds, but they expect to know this information in “upwards of a week.” The foundation plans to allow its attorney to represent all staking providers and leasers in any court proceedings related to the incident.