A Florida federal judge has ruled in favor of plaintiffs who sued the anonymous hacker and issued a formal notice of action through the NFT, according to recent court documents.

The ruling, the default decision by Judge Beth Bloom of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida, found that unidentified hackers were liable for 971,291 USDT (Tether) they stole from plaintiff Rangan Bandyopadhyay’s Coinbase wallet in December 2021.

The author has been ordered to pay back the equivalent amount to Bandyopadhyay, with the amount set to increase interest on the debt until it is paid off.

Because of the blockchain, it is still unclear who these digital thieves are, let alone where they live. That’s why Judge Bloom allowed them to be notified by the NFT in last week’s case, using the same address on the chain they used to rob Bandyopadhyay.

The hackers tricked the plaintiff into linking his Coinbase wallet to a fake liquidity mining project, and then draining the money from that wallet into his own. After several transfers, the funds end up in the Binance exchange pool.

Judge Bloom’s determination that NFTs are a valid form of legal notification of these defendants marks the first time a US federal court has allowed service to defendants by NFTs.

Prior to last week’s sentencing, New York county court permit this practice at the beginning of last year. Last summer, a British court ruled that NFTs were an acceptable method of serving anonymous chain defendants in that country.

This trend marks a turning point for a legal system that is desperately trying to catch up with new types of crimes facilitated by blockchain technology. Cryptocurrency-savvy hackers routinely create elaborate networks of fake companies to persuade unsuspecting victims to link their wallets, which are promptly emptied. In an ecosystem where even well-known legitimate players routinely operate anonymously, it’s hard to tell the legitimate from the dubious.

It is even more difficult to recover funds and digital assets after they have been stolen.

But according to Fernando Bobadilla – the lawyer who successfully represented Bandyopadhyay in last week’s case – blockchain can be as much trouble for hackers as it is for their victims.

“These fraudsters often have businesses outside of the United States, and all they tell their victims are lies about their own identity,” Bobadilla told Decrypt. “But what they can’t hide is the transfer of funds through the blockchain. The ledger is there and they can’t hide.”

The attorney believes he and his client are on their way to recover at least some of the stolen funds – although he would not elaborate on how that might have happened.

“Knowing where they have cryptocurrency makes the whole collection strategy feasible,” was all he had to say.

US-based cryptocurrency companies such as Circle, which issues the USDC stablecoin, and centralized cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, have previously frozen funds or accounts on orders from the US government. However, USDT, the cryptocurrency stolen from the Bandyopadhyay wallet, is issued by Tether, a Hong Kong-based company; Binance, where the funds were allegedly deposited last year, had also previously frozen stolen funds transferred to its account, although the company has also avoided clarifying its country of origin.