Bibox Operator Accuses Early Employee of Illegal Takeover of its Venture

[Pegasus]

A management platform that was recently developed at the Bibox Exchange found itself in the middle of a fierce dispute. According to Bloomberg, the operator of Bibox and its co-founder Wanlin Wang claim that Wei (Estella) Liu, a Chinese national who resides in New York, named herself as the only shareholder of the company behind the venture in order to defraud the entity of more than $3 million.

However, Liu’s lawyer, Timothy Pastore of Duval & Stachenfeld, denies the accusations, saying that Liu has control over the venture in accordance with the law.

Bibox Group Holdings was founded last year with a legal address in the British Virgin Islands and its actual headquarters in New York. It markets itself as the first digital asset exchange operators to leverage artificial intelligence (AI). Today, Bibox claims to manage daily trading volumes that exceed $200 million.

In December of last year, Wang hired Liu to manage the launch of Investre Network, a new venture that represents a cryptocurrency management platform. Wang says he is the one who created the venture from scratch. After hiring Liu, he required her to form two corporate entities – Save Technology, the firm behind Investre Network, and Bibox Technology, which is meant to offer blockchain consulting and advisory services in the US. Wang instructed Liu to name himself and his business partner Hanchao Yang as the sole shareholders and managing members of the two firms.

But, as the complaint reads:

“Liu ignored Wang’s instruction and surreptitiously named herself as the sole managing member and shareholder. Liu intentionally withheld this information from plaintiffs in order to gain improper access and control of the Investre Network.”

The complainants secured about $3 million in the three months until July 2018 in seed funds. Wang discovered the problem when he fired Liu because of her unsatisfactory performance. Liu wasn’t happy about the situation and pretended she was the owner of the two newly created firms. She told Wang that she was ready to return the two entities in exchange for $500,000 plus the equivalent of two month’s wages.

Wang didn’t agree with Liu’s proposed deal, so she changed Investre Network’s webpage by adding her picture and bio, falsely naming herself the Business Development Director at Bibox. According to the suit, she later deleted any indication of Wang from the site and falsely claimed to be the founder and CEO of Investre Network.

However, according to Liu’s attorney, the authorship of Investre’s whitepaper, her ownership of the web domain and the key to the firm’s crypto wallet for releasing the digital assets clearly indicate that she is the actual owner of the venture.

“The plaintiffs didn’t do any of that work. All the indicia of ownership rest with her,” Pastore said.

He added that the webpage had been controlled by Liu, so she can do whatever changes she likes. Wang’s only evidence that he owns the ventures relies on his claim that he instructed Liu to create the two firms. According to Pastore, this doesn’t weigh so much.

Besides Wang, the list of plaintiffs also includes Yang’s New York-based technology services firm Captain Capital Management, which was about to become the initial owner of Investre, and Seoul-based Blockwater Management, a cryptocurrency investment firm where Wang is a partner.

Currently, the Investre website shows Estella Liu as the CEO of the firm.

After some of the letters exchanged by lawyers before the suite became public, the price of the Bibox Token fell on October 11 by about 10%. However, it is difficult to know whether the scandal was the main driver, given that the bearish movement comes exactly amid the drop in Bitcoin and other major cryptocurrencies.

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