According to a notice dated 7 January 2019, Silver Miller, a crypto-focused law firm and Levi & Korsinsky, a securities law firm, filed a class action lawsuit against the developers of the altcoin Nano (NANO) and Italian crypto exchange BitGrail.

Both the law firms represent a Nano investor named James Fabian and other individuals who were placed in the same situation as him. Developers and significant members of the core team of Nano were accused of violating federal securities laws for being involved in an unauthorized offering and sale of securities. They were also accused of directing investors to entrust their funds to the crypto exchange BitGrail, a non-transparent firm with multiple issues. BitGrail and its CEO Francesco Firano were also required to defend themselves for promoting the cryptocurrency NANO.

The two accused parties have been involved in similar cases in the past. In February 2018, over $180 million worth of Nano disappeared from BitGrail. On 9 February 2018, the crypto exchange released a note stating that 17 million NANO was stolen by hackers. The crypto exchange left a bad name for itself in the industry after the controversial theft since details of it were left unclear and investors who are technologically knowledgeable accused the exchange for not solving obvious vulnerabilities.

Moreover, the exchange did not place responsibilities on itself since the disappearance of the digital assets were supposedly the hackers’ fault. The firm even retracted a plan which was introduced to reimburse the investors, stating that the exchange did not have the financial capability to refund the victims. The Nano team added trouble to the exchange when they accused the exchange for the alleged theft and set up a legal fund for the victims.

In the lawsuit, Nano was asked to perform a ‘rescue fork’ and return the lost Nano tokens to the investors who were classed as victims in the form of other cryptocurrencies that would compensate the victims appropriately.