A Swiss cryptocurrency investor has filed a federal lawsuit in Manhattan against the collapsed exchange BKEX, alleging the misappropriation of approximately $8 million in digital assets and seeking the return of the funds along with damages.
According to the New York Law Journal, the suit was filed Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York by Xiaoliang Mou, a Chinese national who lives in Switzerland. Mou claims his crypto deposits vanished after he placed them on BKEX’s platform.
The complaint names BTC King Technology Co. Ltd., which did business as BKEX, and individual Ji Jiaming as defendants, and identifies attorney Thomas Liam Murphy as counsel for Mou. A publicly available summary describes a roughly 38-page filing that accuses the exchange of misappropriation and statutory violations, according to OffshoreAlert.
Exchange History and Red Flags
BKEX abruptly froze withdrawals in late May 2023, saying it was cooperating with a police investigation into possible money laundering. That move left many customers locked out of their funds and the platform largely dormant afterward, as reported by Crypto.news.
Chinese courts later weighed in. Early in 2025, judges found aspects of BKEX’s contract trading to be unlawful, and several staff members were sentenced in that case, according to coverage by The Blockchain.
What the Complaint Seeks
Mou’s lawsuit asks the court to order the turnover of the allegedly missing digital assets, along with compensatory damages and prejudgment interest. The New York Law Journal reports that the complaint relies on federal statutes and common-law theories aimed at reaching assets that Mou says were taken or unlawfully withheld by BKEX.
Why Recovery Is Difficult
Even when crypto exchanges collapse or freeze customer accounts, clawing assets back can be a slog, particularly when the operators are overseas and the platforms effectively go dark. High-profile failures like FTX show that recovery is possible, but more the exception than the rule. Advisors in that case have recovered billions of dollars through coordinated asset sales and litigation, according to reporting by Bloomberg.
Mou’s case is still in its early stages. Expect jurisdictional fights, motions to dismiss and attempts to trace or freeze any wallets still tied to BKEX. How quickly anything happens will depend on whether the defendants can be served and whether a U.S. court is willing to assert authority over an exchange domiciled in the British Virgin Islands.
Legal Implications
If Mou’s complaint pursues claims under statutes such as the Commodity Exchange Act, the lawsuit could become an early test of how U.S. law reaches offshore trading platforms and crypto products that many markets treat as sitting outside American regulation. Legal analysts say enforcing any judgment against foreign operators is likely to be complex and may require parallel proceedings in multiple countries, a challenge outlined in recent digital assets updates by Gibson Dunn.
