Two law firms in the United States – Silver Miller and Levi Korsinsky – have filed a class action lawsuit against the controversial Italian cryptocurrency exchange Bitgrail and the developers of the altcoin Nano.

Both firms are representing James Fabian, who invested in Nano and “all other persons similarly situated.”

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The lawsuit alleges that Nano and key members of its core team violated federal securities laws. The complaint further alleges that the developers, with an intention to push Nano into an ideal market of investors, recklessly directed investors to open accounts and place their assets with a little known, and severely troubled, Italian cryptocurrency exchange.

In addition, the complaint further accuses Nano and its core team of engaging in an unregistered offering and sale of securities that violated multiple federal securities laws in the United States.

Bitgrail Controversy

In early 2018, $170 million worth of Nano coins suddenly disappeared from Bitgrail. Though details of the theft were unclear initially, many tech-savvy investors accused the exchange of not fixing some major known vulnerabilities. Later, the investors’ outrage turned very ugly and the founder of the exchange, Francesco “The Bomber” Firano, was accused of theft, fraud, and even faced death threats on social media.

The exchange’s take on the hack also remained very controversial as it did not consider itself to be responsible for the theft or obligated to return the stolen money. Moreover, after showcasing a plan to reimburse customers “voluntarily” the exchange retracted it saying that it has no money to repay the victims.

NANO on BitGrail have been stolen.

Unfortunately there is no way to give it back to you at 100% (we only got 4 MLN XRN right now).

The devs, as you have guessed, dont want to collaborate

— Francesco The Bomber (@bomberfrancy) February 9, 2018

A couple of months after the theft, a similar class action lawsuit was filed in a US court seeking a court-ordered hard fork of the cryptocurrency. Interestingly, the core community of Nano also turned against Bitgrail and announced the setting up of a legal fund for the victims.

In the recent lawsuit, Silver Miller and Levi Korsinsky are asking the Court to rescind the plaintiff class’ investments in Nano and order a “rescue fork” to restore the allegedly missing Nano tokens into a new cryptocurrency in a manner that would fairly compensate the class of victims.