Ping Fai Yuen will likely recover 2,323 Bitcoin from his estranged wife, a UK High Court ruled. Justice Cotter's judgment of March 10, 2026, allows the lawsuit to proceed over Bitcoin worth £160-180 million ($172 million at current prices).
Fun Yung Li allegedly installed covert CCTV cameras inside their Brighton home. The cameras captured footage of Yuen entering the 24-word recovery phrase for his Trezor hardware wallet. A seed phrase is the master key. Anyone who possesses it can recreate the wallet on a new device and move all funds.
On August 2, 2023, the full 2,323.28 BTC balance was transferred without Yuen's knowledge. The Bitcoin was worth roughly $60 million at the time. Through a series of transactions, the funds were dispersed across 71 blockchain addresses not held at exchanges. No transactions have been recorded on those addresses since December 21, 2023. At current prices, the same coins are worth nearly three times more.
Yuen's daughter warned him in July 2023 that Li was trying to obtain access to his Bitcoin. He installed concealed audio recording equipment in the home. The recordings allegedly captured Li discussing the transfer.
The Bitcoin has transferred to me... take all of it.
— Fun Yung Li, from audio transcripts cited in court filings
A July 29, 2023, recording allegedly captured Li discussing camera placement. She talked about where Yuen stored his wallet credentials. In another excerpt, she raised the difficulty of cashing out. "You claim that your money was Bitcoin, such large amount, so many questions, how are you going to explain about it? Such large amount even 10 Banks which it's not enough to put them into," the transcript reads. She discussed buying things in Hong Kong where virtual currency is legal, and the risk of being reported for money laundering.
After discovering the transfer, Yuen confronted Li physically. He was arrested, and in September 2024 pleaded guilty to assault occasioning actual bodily harm and two counts of common assault.
Li's team tried to get the claim thrown out. They argued that conversion (wrongful interference with physical property) does not apply to Bitcoin. The judge agreed, per OBG Ltd v Allan [2007]. The Property (Digital Assets etc) Act 2025 recognizes digital assets as personal property but lacks the possessory rights needed for a conversion claim.
That tort was struck, but the rest of the lawsuit survived. Unjust enrichment, breach of confidence, proprietary restitution, and constructive trust remain as paths to recovery.
In my judgment the claimant has demonstrated a very high probability of success. The evidence is that he was warned of what the First Defendant was seeking to do, the transcripts are damning; and when the First Defendant's property was searched, the necessary equipment to exfiltrate the Bitcoin was found.
— Justice Cotter, High Court of England and Wales
Police arrested Fun Yung Li in December 2023. Officers searched her home and seized 10 cold wallets (one a Trezor, same make Yuen used), five recovery seed phrases, and numerous high-value watches. Four wallets were accessible. Three had names linked to Yuen. Li gave a no-comment interview and was released. Authorities took no further action pending new evidence.
In November 2025, Yuen applied for a proprietary asset preservation injunction. The court froze Li's cryptocurrency holdings and formally declared his ownership of the 2,323 BTC. Li's application for £678,715 in security for costs was dismissed. The judge called her team's estimate of 245 hours of solicitor time for disclosure "staggering" and 75 hours for case management conference preparation "nonsense."
Li's affidavit was a bare denial. Justice Cotter described it as "essentially a one sentence response" confirming she was unaware of any relevant information. Her sister Lai Yung Li, the second defendant, has been evading service.
Yuen held $60 million in a single hardware wallet protected only by a PIN and a 24-word seed phrase. No multi-signature arrangement, no geographic distribution of key shares, no passphrase (25th word). The CCTV attack vector is a variant of what the crypto community calls a "$5 wrench attack," bypassing cryptographic security through physical-world access. In this case, the wrench was a camera. Multi-sig wallets, Shamir Secret Sharing, and metal seed storage in a separate physical location are standard countermeasures for holdings of this size.
Binance co-founder Changpeng Zhao commented on the dispute on X. Li now resides in Hong Kong and denies all allegations. The full trial is expected in June 2026. The judge recommended an early hearing, citing "the security threats to, and volatility of value of, the Bitcoin."
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