Mark Shin, Colorado man combating with ICON Basis, a blockchain firm and creator of the ICX token, has requested the San Francisco, Calif. court docket overseeing his civil case to pause proceedings till the state legal case pending in opposition to him resolves. The California case, during which Shin and ICON are cross-claimants, entails “rising applied sciences and problems with first impression relating to a big amount of crypto-assets minted.”
As beforehand reported, Shin created greater than 13 million ICX tokens, then valued at practically $9 million, by profiting from an unintentional error in ICON’s protocols, then prompting ICON to freeze his belongings. Shin sued to regain possession of his frozen tokens, whereas in keeping with final week’s movement to remain, ICON repeatedly threatened to report Shin to regulation enforcement until he returned all of the belongings and accepted ICON’s proposed $200,000 pay out.
Within the final 9 months, the civil court docket issued two combined rulings regarding ICON and Shin’s motions to dismiss, permitting a few of each events’ claims to proceed.
Now, Shin asserts that he’s within the unenviable place of “pursuing his personal civil lawsuit case in opposition to ICON, or risking the usage of any of his statements in opposition to him in a Colorado legal trial.” The submitting explains that though after 9 months of investigation by federal authorities, the appearing United States Lawyer for the District of Colorado refused to file go well with in opposition to Shin.
Nonetheless, a Federal Bureau of Investigation agent on the case, allegedly not eager to lose months of labor, “fed” it to the Arapahoe County District Lawyer’s Workplace. The native authority then indicted Shin for theft after conducting no impartial investigation and continuing on what Shin describes as a “nonsensical” idea that he stole the ICX from “ICON Nation,” that means each one who held their very own ICX on the time of the software program bug.
Shin’s movement says {that a} keep is critical to guard his Fifth Modification rights throughout the pendency of the legal matter. He argues that ICON can’t complain of prejudice as a result of it pushed for the legal investigation within the first place. “ICON’s calculated choice to goad prosecutors into indicting him, which has now been totally revealed by emails produced by ICON in discovery, has made it unimaginable for Shin to correctly prosecute this motion and defend himself from ICON’s counterclaims,” the submitting contends.df
As well as, Shin says there isn’t any query of factual overlap between the 2 instances and accordingly, the endangerment of his constitutional rights as a legal defendant. “Primarily, ICON’s civil counterclaim seeks to show the identical factor because the Colorado prosecutors—that Shin’s ICX have been one way or the other the property of another person who owned the ICX earlier than they appeared in his pockets—and thus continued discovery will essentially implicate Shin’s fifth modification rights.”
A listening to on the matter is scheduled for March 23 earlier than Choose William H. Orrick.
Shin is represented by Roche Freedman LLP and ICON by Manatt Phelps and Phillips and Morrison Cohen.