UK Jeweler Sues Insurer Over Failing To Cover BTC Ransomware Losses

UK Jeweler Graff Diamonds sues its insurer over failing to cover a BTC ransomware loss of $7.7 million as we can read more today in our latest bitcoin news.

The UK jeweler filed a lawsuit against its insurer The Travelers Companies for failing to provide indemnity after paying off $7.5 million in BTC to ransomware attackers. Accoridng to the reprots, Graff’s security systems were exploited by the Russian hacking gang Conti back in 2021. The breach allowed the group to access data that belonged to high-end customers like former US President Donald Trump and the royal families in UAE, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia.

After the attack, Conti published 69,000 documents that contained information about Graff’s clients while threatening to release more if the company didn’t pay $15 million in BTC. In 2021 Graff paid the gang 118 BTC which was half of the amount requested and the company said it had to pay the ransom to protect the customers:

“The criminals threatened targeted publication of our customers’ private purchases. We were determined to take all possible steps to protect their interests and so negotiated a payment which successfully neutralized that threat.”

After the incident, the company expected the insurer to cover the losses that it incurred from the attack because of the insured risk but Graff is yet to receive the indemnity from the travelers. The jeweler said:

“We are extremely frustrated and disappointed by Travelers’ attempt to avoid settlement of this insured risk. They have left us with no option but to bring these recovery proceedings at the High Court.”

In the meantime, BTC ransomware attacks became quite common in the past few years and we saw back in 2021, Elliptic as a blockchain security company revealed the infamous cybercriminal group Dark Side got $90 million in ransom payments. In 2021, the reports showed that the US Department of the world’s biggest meat producer JBS, was forced to pay $11 million in BTC to hackers to prevent further attacks on the plants.

As recently reported, The EX-FED chair Ben Bernanke noted in an interview with CNBC cryptocurrencies are intended to be a substitute for fiat money and they haven’t succeeded. The economist added that the crypto appeal lies with the fact that it is successful as a speculative asst but with the price crashes recently, Bernanke says were are only seeing the downside right now.