Just days after HashFast’s CEO told Ars that his company was “as poor as church mice,” a group of five customers has filed an involuntary bankruptcy petition against the Bitcoin miner manufacturer-turned-chipmaker. It's the first step in an attempt to recover over $330,000 in payments that were apparently never fulfilled.

The rarer Chapter 7 filing governs liquidation of corporate assets rather than a reorganization (Chapter 11). The petition was filed Tuesday in United States Bankruptcy Court in the Northern District of California, located in San Francisco.

“There has been a motion filed to put us into involuntary bankruptcy,” Amy Abascal, the company’s director of marketing, told Ars by e-mail. “We are evaluating our options and preparing our response. We’ll provide information as it’s available.”

Under the procedure of bankruptcy law, HashFast has 21 days to respond and prove its solvency. If it does not, the firm will be compelled to participate. In response, HashFast could file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, which would effectively allow it, and not the claimants, to take over the case.

“My hope is that this transitions to a Chapter 11 and everyone gets paid,” said Ray Gallo, an attorney involved in three of the five arbitration cases against HashFast. “We’d be more likely to get paid if they stay in business.”

Ars’ recent story chronicled these five arbitration cases and the two lawsuits that HashFast has pending against it. Many customers have accused the firm of outright fraud. Some are upset that when the company failed to fulfill its orders, it refused to refund the amount in bitcoins as it previously promised.

The bankruptcy case involves five claimants—Koi Systems of Hong Kong is the single largest one, claiming a loss of over $280,000. The others are UBE Enterprises, a Utah corporation, Timothy Lam of California, Edward Hammond of Texas, and Grant Pederson, also of Texas.

Koi is a “high performance processor board” manufacturer that appears to have had a previous business relationship with HashFast before the San Francisco startup decided it was only going to be a chip manufacturer. When asked about the prior relationship between HashFast and Koi Systems, Abascal told Ars: "I can't comment on anything at all right now."