During the hearing of the case tied to JPMorgan Chase & Co hacker attacks, the Manhattan’s District Court qualified Bitcoin as monetary funds, refusing the attorney of accused hackers from dropping some charges, RNS reports quoting Reuters.
The attorney of accused Gery Shalon stated that the Bitcoin is not “monetary funds” within the federal law, prohibiting the operation of unlicensed funds transfer services. District Judge Ellison Natan overruled the attorney’s statement, qualifying the Bitcoin as the valid currency.
Shalon is the owner of Coin.mx exchange, which was involved in the series of hacker attacks on different financial companies, including JPMorgan, as well as the theft of personal data of dozens of millions of client accounts. According to last year’s report, the criminal activities were conducted in the guise of an exchange in the whole world; many large companies became its victims.
Shalon and the other accused, Ziv Orenstein, were arrested in Israel last year, extradited to the USA and appeared before court in June.
