A man sues Claro after losing his bitcoins on Binance

A few months ago, a Brazilian resident suffered the theft of over $ 34.000 worth of bitcoin (quotation BTC) from your Binance account. But, far from complaining to the platform, he filed a lawsuit against the phone company Claro claiming that his chip had been cloned.  

Claro suddenly stopped working

The case, reported by the Brazilian magazine LiveCoins, began in December last year, when the Claro mobile line of the man's cell phone suddenly stopped working. When this happened, the man complained to customer service. After a few days, he was assigned a new phone number at a Claro store. 

But when everything seemed to be resolved, he realized something unexpected. The bitcoins that Binance had in her account were gone. He noticed that someone with a mobile device located in the city of Sao Paulo had cloned his chip and withdrew all of his funds from the cryptocurrency platform, which were more than $ 34.000 in BTC. 

He explains that his chip was cloned, activated on another device and used to steal his bitcoins. He indicates that the hacker was able to log into his Binance account through the platform-enabled SMS password recovery. 

This type of scam is known as SIM swapping or chip duplication. It consists of duplicating the SIM card of a mobile phone to receive the code sent by the platforms via SMS to confirm a transaction. This way, the scammer can log into your personal accounts and withdraw your money.

Faced with this situation, the user sued Claro in the Federal District Court of Justice of Brazil. He claims that there has been a failure in the provision of the service which has caused serious harm to the bitcoin investor. He asked the company to pay him $ 10.000 for moral damages. 

Claro denied accusation, but court asked her to prove she did not facilitate bitcoin fraud

In response to the lawsuit, Claro denied the compensation claim claiming that she was not responsible for the Binance fraud and asked to be excluded from the lawsuit. However, the court judge did not share the company's statements and asked her to prove that she is not responsible for the failure to provide the service.  

Therefore, the case is still open. Claro will have to prove that it did not favor the fraud, while Binance has not received any claims from the parties concerned. Although in the past year, other users from Latin America, such as Colombia and Venezuela, have taken legal action against the platform for various bitcoin losses.  

This situation demonstrates the importance that cryptocurrency holders and traders should attach to the security measures of their funds. As explained on Cryptopedia, it is always advisable to keep cryptocurrencies in self-guarded wallets outside of exchanges to avoid situations like these.