New Jersey Judge Grants Rare TRO in $430K Crypto Theft Case
September 2, 2025
The National Law Journal
Types : In the News
On a July morning in Avalon, New Jersey, a hedge fund trader awoke beside his wife to find his digital fortune had vanished. The alleged thief was not a shadowy hacker in Moscow or a fraudster working in an overseas call center. It was, according to court filings, his teenage stepson.
John Bellis accused the boy, identified only as A.R., of siphoning off more than $430,000 worth of Bitcoin and Solana. The boy’s father, Dulaney Kelly, is accused of enabling the scheme. And, in an unusual turn, a federal judge entered a temporary restraining order freezing assets across a handful of the world’s most prominent cryptocurrency exchanges.
“We’ve provided a road map for individuals who have had this happen to them,” said John Papianou, a partner at Montgomery McCracken Walker & Rhoads in Philadelphia, who represents Bellis. “There is recourse. This is not cash. You’re able to track these currencies on the ledger and take steps to recover them.”