CipherBlade leadership accused of asset theft and a ‘takeover’ of the company

CipherBlade founder Richard Sanders filed suit against the firm’s current leadership, accusing them of asset theft and document forgery.

Sanders founded a Pennsylvania-based company in 2019 that assists federal government agencies, private companies and individuals in investigations into blockchain-related financial crime.

According to the filing, in 2022, when Sanders went on a volunteer trip to Ukraine, troubles began for the project. Defendants Manuel Kritz and Michael Krause allegedly convinced the founder to grant them access to his email address while he was on assignment.

Knowing that Sanders would be in Ukraine, prior to and immediately after his departure, the defendants provided him with distorted data to gain access to his accounts. They violated trade secrets, stole confidential information about investigations, client information, etc., and also hijacked access to CipherBlade PA itself, according to the filing.

The defendants allegedly redirected clients to a competing firm in Alaska and Singapore. When Sanders began to suspect something, he asked for Kritz to be fired, but that did not happen.

“Kritz continued to work with CipherBlade PA and colluded with other defendants to participate in [criminal] scheme,” the filing states.

Still abroad, Sanders received alerts from the home security system notifying of camera outages. Returning home, the head of CipherBlade found documents relating to the business missing.

“For all these reasons I have no choice but to publicly sever ties and tell everyone that I no longer control CipherBlade or am associated with it,” Sanders wrote on LinkedIn.

Representatives of the company responded on social media that Sanders had never been an owner and “refused to take an active role in CipherBlade’s operations” for the last several years.

Earlier in August, Gala Games co-founders Wright Thurston and Eric Schiermeyer filed lawsuits against each other on charges of embezzlement and misappropriation of the company’s assets worth $130 million.