Binance.US Wins Dismissal in Van Hees Case Due to Time-Barred Claims and Flawed RICO Allegations
On Wednesday, April 15, 2026, the United States District Court for the Northern District of California granted BAM Trading Service Inc.’s motion to dismiss a complaint filed by Inge Van Hees. Judge Jon S. Tigar presided over the case. The court also denied BAM Trading’s motion to stay discovery as moot.
Van Hees’s initial complaint, filed on July 7, 2025, alleged that BAM Trading, doing business as Binance.US, a cryptocurrency trading platform, was liable for damages she incurred after a man induced her to transfer funds to cryptocurrency wallets in February 2022. She claimed the funds were then laundered through the Binance.US platform.
Van Hees further contended that Binance.US, as an extension of Binance.com, failed to comply with transaction monitoring and geo-blocking requirements stipulated by a Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) consent order, indirectly causing her financial injury. She argued that BAM Trading was the alter ego of Binance.com.
Van Hees brought five claims against BAM Trading: violations of the Securities and Exchange Act (SEA), the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), the Consumer Financial Protection Act (CFPA), the Commodities Exchange Act (CEA), and liability for “aiding and abetting” fraud. BAM Trading sought to dismiss the complaint, arguing that all but the RICO claims were time-barred and that the claims suffered from pleading defects.
The court agreed that the SEA, CFPA, CEA, and aiding and abetting claims were time-barred, as the complaint was filed more than three years after Van Hees became aware of the alleged fraud in early 2022. These claims were dismissed with prejudice, meaning they cannot be brought again. The court denied leave to amend these claims, stating that any amendment would be futile.
Regarding the RICO claim, the court found that Van Hees had not sufficiently alleged the elements of a RICO violation. Specifically, she failed to adequately plead the existence of a RICO enterprise, specify predicate racketeering acts, or establish proximate causation between BAM Trading’s alleged misconduct and her injuries. The court stated that Van Hees didn’t demonstrate how BAM Trading, Binance.com, and Joseph were “associated together for a common purpose” or “how the Defendants functioned together as a continuing unit”.
The RICO claim was dismissed with leave to amend, allowing Van Hees 28 days to file an amended complaint addressing the deficiencies identified by the court. Failure to do so would result in the dismissal of the original complaint with prejudice.
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