Charlie Shrem, Winklevoss twins settle lawsuit over missing Bitcoin

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The Winklevoss twins have settled their lawsuit against Charlie Shrem, who they claimed owed them $26 million worth of cryptocurrency.

Judge Jed Rakoff of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York dismissed the case on April 5, CoinDesk reported. In a court filing, Rakoff noted that the two parties informed the court “they had reached a settlement.”

In 2012, the Winklevoss twins said they Shrem $1 million to purchase Bitcoin on their behalf. However, they later discovered that Shrem had not given them the full amount of Bitcoin at all, and that 5,000 coins were missing. That year, the Bitcoin was worth somewhere around $60,000 in total, but as of press time, this amount of Bitcoin would be worth over $26 million. The twins sued Shrem as a result.

Shrem was sentenced to two years in prison in 2015, but ended up serving one year. He has since been called “Bitcoin’s first felon” for Bitinstant’s involvement in the Silk Road marketplace, an online marketplace for drugs that frequently utilized cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin for drug purchases. He was released from prison in 2016.

After his release, the Winklevoss twins noticed that Shrem was spending money quite lavishly for a convict that had just come home from prison, and decided to hire a private investigator for more information. They asserted that Shrem has been spending the missing Bitcoin in question, and that this was the reason he was able to spend money in this manner. The private investigator also supposedly linked the missing 5,000 crypto coins to Shrem, as well. The Winklevoss lawsuit against Charlie Shrem made headlines in November 2018.

The attorney for the Winklevoss Capital fund (WCF) stated in a filing that “the case will not be reopened.” Either way, both parties have the right to reopen the case and proceed to trial within 30 days.