ZachXBT Links US Seized Crypto Theft to Contractor CEO’s Son

TheNewsCryptoPublished on 2026-01-26Last updated on 2026-01-26

Abstract

Blockchain investigator ZachXBT has alleged that the individual responsible for stealing millions of dollars in cryptocurrency from U.S. government-controlled wallets is John Daghita, the son of Dean Daghita, CEO of Command Services and Support (CMDSS). The company was contracted by the U.S. Marshals Service to manage seized digital assets. ZachXBT linked online persona “Lick” to the theft, tracing transactions back to a government wallet tied to the 2016 Bitfinex hack. Approximately $23 million was consolidated into a single wallet during the incident. CMDSS has not commented, and no criminal charges have been filed.

ZachXBT, a blockchain investigator, has claimed that the person accountable for a multimillion-dollar robbery of cryptocurrency from US government-curbed wallets is the son of the CEO of a company contracted to protect captured digital assets.

ZachXBT posted his detailed findings, claiming that a body known online as “Lick”, recognised as John Daghita, drained tens of millions of dollars in crypto from wallets associated with the US government.

He further claimed that Daghita is the son of Dean Daghita, president and CEO of Command Services and Support (CMDSS), a firm contracted by the US Marshals Service to manage some captured cryptocurrencies.

Public records reveal that CMDSS, based in Haymarket, Virginia, was awarded a contract in October 2024 to help the Marshals Service with the custody and disposal of so-called “Class 2-4” digital assets.

These comprise tokens that aren’t backed by prominent centralised exchanges and mostly need bespoke handling. The claim hasn’t been tested in court, and no criminal charges have been publicised.

At the time of writing, CMDSS had not officially commented on the matter. The claims of ZachXBT were highlighted with the publication of January 23, which associated the same online persona with over $90 million in suspected illegal crypto activity.

The Investigation

The investigation followed the trail back to a U.S. government wallet linked with assets captured from the 2016 Bitfinex hack. The inquiry gained traction after a listed dispute in a Telegram group chat between “Lick” and another individual.

At the time of exchange, “Lick” screen-shared an Exodus wallet showing a Tron address holding around $2.3 million after a live transfer of around $6.7 million in Ether. With the conclusion of the session, around $23 million had been united into a single wallet.

After the transactions were traced backward, ZachXBT associated that wallet with an address that got $24.9 million from a US government-controlled wallet in March 2024.

Highlighted Crypto News Today:

Metaplanet Lifts 2026 Outlook Despite $680M BTC Write-Down

TagsCEOUSAZachXBT

Related Questions

QWho is ZachXBT and what did he claim in his investigation?

AZachXBT is a blockchain investigator who claimed that the person responsible for a multimillion-dollar cryptocurrency theft from US government-curbed wallets is the son of the CEO of Command Services and Support (CMDSS), a company contracted to protect captured digital assets.

QWhat is the online alias and real name of the individual accused of the crypto theft?

AThe individual accused is known online as 'Lick' and is identified as John Daghita.

QWhat is the connection between the accused individual and the company CMDSS?

AJohn Daghita is alleged to be the son of Dean Daghita, who is the president and CEO of Command Services and Support (CMDSS).

QWhat was the value of the suspected illegal crypto activity associated with the online persona 'Lick'?

AThe online persona 'Lick' was associated with over $90 million in suspected illegal crypto activity.

QFrom which infamous hack were the assets in the US government wallet linked to?

AThe assets in the US government wallet were linked to the 2016 Bitfinex hack.

Related Reads

Trump's 38th Call 'Deal is Imminent', Global Markets Experience TACO-style Surge

Former U.S. President Trump claimed for the 38th time that a "final agreement" is imminent, triggering a "TACO-style" surge in global stock markets. Major U.S. indices, as well as Japanese and South Korean markets, posted significant gains, with oil prices falling and gold rising. The market rally is attributed to renewed hopes for a ceasefire in the U.S.-Iran-Israel conflict, the latest U.S. CPI data showing inflation at a multi-year high but easing core pressures, and a significantly reduced expectation of a Federal Reserve rate hike this year. However, analysts warn of potential risks. The situation in the Middle East remains unresolved, with Iran denying any agreement. Several institutions have turned cautious, flagging overvaluation, speculative excess, and warning of a potential 6-7% correction in the S&P 500. Additionally, the massive SpaceX IPO, which has seen overwhelming retail demand, is testing market liquidity as investors may sell existing holdings to participate. Experts advise caution against market volatility driven by Trump's unpredictable statements.

Odaily星球日报5m ago

Trump's 38th Call 'Deal is Imminent', Global Markets Experience TACO-style Surge

Odaily星球日报5m ago

Retail Ecology Dwindles, ZKsync Bets on Bank Pilots for a Breakthrough

Amidst declining retail activity, ZKsync is pivoting to target institutional banking as its primary growth strategy. The article explores this shift, contrasting it with the competitive "survival of the fittest" narrative by highlighting a cooperative model inspired by naturalist Peter Kropotkin. ZKsync is developing infrastructure like its private, permissioned Prividium suite for banks (e.g., Deutsche Bank's use case via Memento), enabling private transactions with public verifiability via zero-knowledge proofs. This appeals to institutions needing privacy, compliance, and Ethereum-based settlement security, unlike fully private chains (e.g., JPMorgan's Kinaxis) or consortium models (e.g., R3 Corda). However, this strategic focus has coincided with a steep decline in its public DeFi ecosystem, evidenced by plunging TVL and the departure of major protocols like Aave due to low fees. The network's future now hinges on banking adoption, with upcoming pilots like the Cari Network involving regional banks holding over $600 billion in deposits. A significant challenge is balancing this institutional focus with ZKsync's decentralized governance. Banks must operate on a network where rules and fees (denominated in the volatile ZK token) can be changed via community vote, and where a Security Council holds emergency control—a stark contrast to the predictable, contract-bound environments of traditional finance. The coming 18 months will test whether ZKsync can successfully onboard traditional banks onto a dynamically governed public chain or if institutions will ultimately revert to proprietary solutions.

Foresight News17m ago

Retail Ecology Dwindles, ZKsync Bets on Bank Pilots for a Breakthrough

Foresight News17m ago

The Recursive AI Anthropic Warned About: Tian Yuandong's New Company Has Just Taken the "First Step"

Anthropic recently highlighted the rapid progress toward "recursive self-improvement," where AI systems autonomously design and train their successors. In response, Recursive Superintelligence, a new company co-founded by former Meta researcher Tian Yuan Dong, has publicly demonstrated its first step toward automating AI research. The company released a system designed to autonomously execute the full AI research cycle: generating ideas, implementing code, running experiments, and learning from results. It validated this approach by achieving state-of-the-art results on three diverse benchmarks: 1. **NanoChat Autoresearch:** Optimizing a small language model's validation loss under a fixed 5-minute GPU budget, improving upon the community's best result. 2. **NanoGPT Speedrun:** Reducing the time to train a GPT model to a specific loss on 8 H100 GPUs from 79.7 seconds to 77.5 seconds, beating a highly optimized, human-driven community effort. 3. **SOL-ExecBench:** Improving the overall score on NVIDIA's suite of 235 GPU kernel optimization tasks by 18%, closing the gap to the hardware limit. The system discovered novel optimizations in this highly specialized domain without direct human expertise. Recursive's system operates as a general framework, capable of parallel exploration and cross-task knowledge transfer while incorporating safeguards against reward hacking. The company, backed by $650M in funding and a star-studded team including Richard Socher and Alexey Dosovitskiy, aims to create AI that recursively enhances its own research capabilities. This development represents an early but concrete move toward a new paradigm where AI accelerates its own advancement. It occurs alongside Anthropic's warnings about the need for industry coordination and potential pauses when recursive self-improvement thresholds are reached, highlighting the dual trajectory of rapid technical progress and growing calls for careful stewardship.

marsbit24m ago

The Recursive AI Anthropic Warned About: Tian Yuandong's New Company Has Just Taken the "First Step"

marsbit24m ago

The Gold Buy-on-the-Dip Guide: Watch Interest Rates, Not Just War

"Gold Buying Guide: Focus on Interest Rates, Not Just War" Four months ago, gold buyers likely didn't anticipate buying at a peak that even a war couldn't sustain. After hitting a record high of $5,596 on January 29, gold entered a bear market just 91 days later, its fastest decline since 2008. A key trigger was the Fed's hawkish shift, highlighting that monetary policy, not geopolitics, is the primary driver. The article argues that the traditional "buy gold in turmoil" script has changed. While the US-Iran conflict initially boosted prices, the sustained rally in oil prices heightened inflation fears, forcing central banks to maintain or consider tighter policy. Since gold yields no interest, higher rates increase its opportunity cost, eroding its appeal. This dynamic was evident when gold fell sharply on May 18 despite positive peace talks, as lower oil prices eased inflation and thus rate hike pressures. The recent sell-off is also part of a broader market deleveraging. Correlations between gold, Nasdaq, and Bitcoin spiked as leveraged investors sold liquid assets to cover losses, creating a synchronized downturn. Historically, gold bottoms align with policy shifts, not conflict resolutions. The 2008 and 2022 bear markets ended with shifts to extreme easing and peak inflation expectations, respectively. For potential buyers, the author suggests monitoring three signals: 1) Peak interest rate hike expectations, 2) Reopening of the Strait of Hormuz (to ease oil/inflation pressure), and 3) A return to net inflows for Gold ETFs, indicating the end of forced selling. While predicting the exact bottom is impossible, the author's personal strategy involves scaling into a position across price levels like $4000, $3700, and $3500, committing no more than 30% of the intended total allocation initially, and adding the remainder only if key signals emerge. The core conclusion: In turbulent times, watching interest rates is more crucial than watching wars.

marsbit30m ago

The Gold Buy-on-the-Dip Guide: Watch Interest Rates, Not Just War

marsbit30m ago

Recent On-Chain Review: No Clear Narrative Under U.S. Stock Market Pressure, Just Hype

This article analyzes the current state of the Solana meme coin and community token ecosystem, highlighting a market caught between two dominant forces: attention-based PvP and a gradual return to community-centric projects. The first part explores the "Attention PvP" dynamic, where success is driven by celebrity endorsements, viral events, and speed. Examples include $JOTCHUA, which surged after its meme creator's social media activity, and $WORLDCUP, which outperformed a similar Base chain project ($PITCH) largely due to influencer support. The recent "pump.fun GO" feature, allowing bounty tasks for token promotion, is critiqued for fostering sensationalist and often negative stunts—like people getting token tickers tattooed on their bodies for rewards—reminiscent of old internet shock content. In contrast, the article points to a resurgence of organic, community-driven tokens that survive market volatility through strong holder bases and shared ideology, not just hype. Influencer Ansem is cited, arguing that durable meme coins rely on communities willing to endure losses and promote their core message daily. Examples given are older tokens like $neet (anti-work ethos), $troll, $buttcoin, and $triplet, which have maintained relative price stability. A prime example of this community-build model is the new project $KINS, the token for the browser-based MMORPG Kintara. Its success stems not from advanced graphics but from consistently delivering updates, fostering player trust, and creating genuine engagement (e.g., in-game economies, events, property auctions). It has attracted a growing player base and even notable KOLs as participants, demonstrating that sustainable growth can come from building trust rather than orchestrating pumps. The article concludes by questioning whether the market is ultimately a game of mutual trust or mutual deception, expressing hope that such reflection might lead to a healthier ecosystem.

marsbit30m ago

Recent On-Chain Review: No Clear Narrative Under U.S. Stock Market Pressure, Just Hype

marsbit30m ago

Trading

Spot
Futures
活动图片