Wife Accused of Spying to Steal $172M in Bitcoin

A Bitcoin theft case now before the UK High Court reads less like a property dispute and more like a surveillance thriller — a wife allegedly spying on her husband inside their own home, recording his every move to capture a 12-word seed phrase worth $172 million. Ping Fai Yuen, a UK resident, claims his estranged wife Fun Yung Li stole his entire Bitcoin holding by covertly recording him to obtain access credentials to his Trezor hardware wallet. On August 2, 2023, all 2,323 Bitcoin vanished. The coins have barely moved since.

How Do You Steal $172 Million Without Touching a Bank?

You don't. You just watch someone type their seed phrase.

According to court filings, Yuen kept his 2,323 Bitcoin — valued at over $172 million at the time of the alleged theft — stored in a Trezor hardware wallet, one of the most widely trusted cold storage devices on the market. The wallet's security depends entirely on a recovery phrase, a sequence of words that grants total control over the funds to anyone who possesses it. Yuen alleges Li obtained that phrase by recording him inside their shared home, possibly with the help of her sister, Lai Yung Li, who is named as a co-defendant in the proceedings.

The transfer happened fast. On August 2, 2023, the entire balance left Yuen's wallet in a single move. The funds were then routed through 71 separate addresses — a pattern that suggests deliberate obfuscation — before going cold. No transaction has been recorded since December 21, 2023.

The Bitcoin has transferred to me. Take all of it.

The Recordings That Could Decide the Case

Here is where it gets strange. Yuen's own daughter reportedly warned him in July 2023 that Li was trying to access his crypto. Rather than move the funds immediately — which, in hindsight, would have solved everything — he installed audio recording equipment inside the house instead. Those recordings are now the backbone of his legal case.

A transcript from July 29, 2023 allegedly captures Li discussing camera placement and the location where Yuen stored his wallet credentials. Another recording cited in filings contains the lines attributed to Li about the Bitcoin theft UK High Court proceedings: that the funds had transferred to her, and to take all of it. The judge called these transcripts "damning."

After discovering the transfer, Yuen confronted Li and assaulted her. He was arrested, and later pleaded guilty to assault occasioning actual bodily harm and two counts of common assault. Police arrested Li in 2023 as well, seizing 10 crypto cold wallets during their search — several of which were linked to Yuen. She gave a no-comment interview. Authorities have since stated they will take no further action unless new evidence emerges.

What the Judge Actually Said

In a judgment following a March 2 hearing, Justice Cotter granted Yuen a proprietary asset preservation injunction — freezing Li's crypto holdings and ordering either the return of the assets or their equivalent value in British pounds. The ruling confirmed Yuen's ownership claim and directed the case toward a full trial.

Cotter leaned on Occam's razor: the simplest explanation, he argued, fits the evidence. Li has had opportunity to present her version of events in these proceedings. She has not. That absence, combined with the daughter's warning, the audio transcripts, and the discovery of equipment capable of accessing the wallet, led the judge to conclude that Yuen's account carries a "strong likelihood of success."

Cotter also flagged the volatility of Bitcoin as a reason to move quickly — the value of the contested assets could shift dramatically during litigation, which creates urgency for a swift trial. As of March 2026, the case remains active before the UK High Court of Justice.

What This Case Means for Bitcoin Self-Custody

The crypto community loves the phrase "not your keys, not your coins." What gets said less often: having your keys in a place where someone else can see them is almost the same as not having them at all.

Yuen's situation is an extreme version of a risk that every self-custody holder faces. A Trezor is a highly secure device — but it is only as secure as the environment where you use it and store the recovery phrase. Hardware wallets don't get hacked remotely. They get compromised in living rooms, by people who already have physical access and a reason to look.

This case is also a test for English courts. Digital asset ownership disputes of this scale are still relatively rare in case law, and the question of how courts establish proof of theft — when no bank, no custodian, and no intermediary was involved — is genuinely unsettled. Justice Cotter's willingness to apply traditional property law concepts like proprietary injunctions to on-chain Bitcoin suggests the courts are adapting. The full trial will push that further.

2,323 Bitcoin sitting silent across 71 addresses since late 2023. Wherever those coins are, nobody is spending them. Whether that's caution, strategy, or simply waiting — nobody outside the case seems to know.