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A divorce and theft case with a lot on the line is going on at London’s High Court of Justice. It has gotten a lot of interest from the cryptocurrency world. Ping Fai Yuen, a British man, is suing his estranged wife, Fun Yung Li, for secretly stealing more than 2,323 Bitcoin, which is worth about $172 million or Rp2.9 trillion at today’s prices. He says she did this by secretly recording his seed phrase and moving the whole thing out of his Trezor hardware wallet.
Court papers filed in late 2025 and made public lately show that a complicated and very intimate betrayal happened over the course of several months in 2023. The story mixes old-fashioned spouse spying with new crypto mechanics to show how easy it is for even big self-custodied holdings to be stolen when physical protection is weak.
How the Reported Theft Happened
The claimant says that Ping has been keeping his Bitcoin on a Trezor hardware wallet from at least the beginning of 2023. On August 2, 2023, the whole balance was transferred without his knowledge or permission. Blockchain records show that the money was sent to 71 different addresses in several transactions. Since then, it has been inactive since December 21, 2023.
In July 2023, Ping’s own child told him to be careful since the mother might be trying to take control of the crypto holdings. Following this idea, Ping put audio recording devices all over the house to collect proof. The tapes supposedly caught a number of talks that were incriminating, such as “Bitcoin itu sudah ditransfer ke saya” (“The Bitcoin has already been transferred to me”) and “ambil semuanya” (“take everything”).
More evidence submitted to the court included claims that Fun worked with her sister, Lai Yung Li, to keep an eye on Ping’s wallet access. One very serious assertion is that Fun utilised the family’s home CCTV system to record Ping entering his seed phrase or passphrase while he was vulnerable. Once you got the 12- or 24-word recovery phrase, the rest was easy: import the seed into a wallet that works with it, sweep the money, and spread it out over different addresses to hide the trace.
Police Involvement and First Results
The issue quickly got worse outside of the family home. Ping told the police about the theft, and Fun was arrested in 2023. During the police search, they found eleven cold wallets, at least three of which were connected to Ping’s assets. Even though there was tangible evidence, Fun was let go without charges since there wasn’t enough concrete proof linking her to the actual transfers. The case is now in civil court, where it is easier to prove your case than in criminal court.
In November 2025, Ping asked for a worldwide freezing order on Fun’s assets, including any cryptocurrency holdings, and for the return of the stolen Bitcoin or its equivalent in pounds. High Court Judge Cotter said on March 2, 2026, that Ping has a strong prima facie case and a good chance of winning at trial. The judge said that the defendant had not yet offered any substantial counter-narrative, and because Bitcoin’s price is so unstable, the case needed to be resolved quickly to stop the disputed value from losing more value.
More general lessons for people who own crypto
This event teaches us a lot of useful things about having a lot of cryptocurrency:
- Don’t ever enter or show your seed phrase in a place you don’t totally control. Hidden cameras, keyloggers, and even hacked smartphones can record the words in a matter of seconds.
- For big amounts of money, use multisig wallets. With a 2-of-3 or 3-of-5 structure, no one person (not even a spouse or family member) can move money.
- For high-value wallets, think about keeping the keys separate by location or using Shamir’s secret sharing. They can’t act alone even if they get some of the recovery information.
- Change your address often and don’t use the same one more than once. When a public key is made public, such when you spend from an old address, it can be attacked by quantum computers in the future or, in this example, stolen along with the seed.
- Write down and date big amounts of money. In circumstances like this one, it’s often important to show who owned something at a certain moment. Screenshots, signed texts, and notarized records might be very important.
The situation also makes us think about how much we can trust each other when we have a lot of cryptocurrency. People who steal digital assets at home are thought to not report it very often because they are embarrassed, afraid of getting in trouble, or don’t want to get the police involved. As the value of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies goes up, these kinds of things are expected to happen more often.
What is going on now and what will happen next
The High Court has given Ping a freezing order over Fun’s assets until the trial. Judge Cotter stressed how important it was to act quickly because Bitcoin is so volatile. A protracted wait might change the true value of any recovery by a lot. The next hearing will probably be about discovery, witness testimonies, and forensic blockchain analysis to find the missing money.
It is still unclear if Ping will get back the stolen Bitcoin or its current currency value. It is harder to trace the funds because there are 71 output addresses, and they have been sitting unused for more than two years, which makes people wonder if they have been moved again using mixers or privacy techniques.
No matter what happens in the case, it is a sobering reminder that the greatest cryptography in the world can be broken by a single instant of poor physical security. In crypto, just like in reality, the individuals closest to us are frequently the ones who pose the most threats, not the most skilled hackers from far away.
Read Also: 12 Malaysian police officers arrested in a $51,000 crypto extortion case
