{"id":5602,"date":"2026-01-14T08:44:37","date_gmt":"2026-01-14T08:44:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cryptonews.uk.com\/?p=5602"},"modified":"2026-01-14T08:44:37","modified_gmt":"2026-01-14T08:44:37","slug":"xrp-theft-case-takes-twist-as-accused-files-countersuit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cryptonews.uk.com\/?p=5602","title":{"rendered":"XRP Theft Case Takes Twist as Accused Files Countersuit"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<div id=\"blockquote-block_5d7fcacce8e458a7313f84fc7ffae17e\" class=\"blockquote-container\" style=\"border-color: #5100fc\">\n<div class=\"blockquote-text\">\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Kirk West filed a countersuit against Nancy Jones, claiming the 5.5 million XRP and US$400k in cash were shared relationship assets, not stolen property.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">West, an alleged \u201ccrypto expert,\u201d is demanding half of their combined wealth, including US$11.6 million in XRP and US$5 million in physical gold and silver.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Jones alleges West stole her Ledger wallet containing the funds; while legal teams recovered 5 million XRP, roughly US$1 million in tokens remains missing.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>A man accused of taking millions of dollars\u2019 worth of XRP from Nancy Jones, the widow of country singer George Jones, is now suing her, arguing the assets were shared wealth and that she defamed him. Rolling Stone reported the countersuit was filed on Friday.<\/p>\n<p>Kirk West, 58, of Nashville, was arrested last year after authorities alleged he stole US$400K (AU$612K) in cash and more than 5.5 million XRP. At current prices cited in the report, the XRP is valued at more than US$11.6 million (AU$17.7 million).<\/p>\n<p><strong>Read more:<\/strong> Monero Breaks $500 as Zcash Turmoil and Privacy Narrative Fuel Rally<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-west-disputes-claims-on-stolen-funds\">West Disputes Claims on Stolen Funds<\/h2>\n<p>West\u2019s filing disputes the theft claim and says he should receive half of the assets accumulated during their relationship, including crypto holdings, US$5 million (AU$7.6 million) in gold and silver, and US$1 million (AU$1.5 million) in cash, according to Rolling Stone.<\/p>\n<p>The relationship began after George Jones died in 2013, court documents cited by Nashville TV station WKRN said. West initially approached Nancy Jones about buying the Jones home and later became romantically involved with her.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The records also describe West as presenting himself as a \u201ccrypto expert\u201d and persuading Jones to buy tokens including XRP, Ether, Dogecoin, Shiba Inu and Stellar, while an affidavit tied to a restraining order alleges he also took some of her ETH and SHIB.<\/p>\n<p>Jones\u2019 claim centers on a missing Ledger hardware wallet that held the keys to her crypto, which she said disappeared after she removed West from her home last year. The report said she recovered just over 5 million XRP with legal help, but about 483,000 XRP, now valued at more than US$1 million (AU$1.5 million), was still unrecovered.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Read more<\/strong>: Standard Chartered Sees Ether Poised to Outperform Bitcoin, Targets US$40K by 2030<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Law,XRP#XRP #Theft #Case #Takes #Twist #Accused #Files #Countersuit1768380277<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Kirk West filed a countersuit against Nancy Jones, claiming the 5.5 million XRP and US$400k in cash were shared relationship assets, not stolen property. West, an alleged \u201ccrypto expert,\u201d is demanding half of their combined wealth, including US$11.6 million in XRP and US$5 million in physical gold and silver. Jones alleges West stole her Ledger<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5603,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[1227,1224,1228,893,1225,1223,1226,230],"class_list":{"0":"post-5602","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-bitcoin","8":"tag-accused","9":"tag-case","10":"tag-countersuit","11":"tag-files","12":"tag-takes","13":"tag-theft","14":"tag-twist","15":"tag-xrp"},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.6 (Yoast SEO v26.6) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>XRP Theft Case Takes Twist as Accused Files Countersuit - Crypto News: Latest Cryptocurrency News and Analysis<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/cryptonews.uk.com\/?p=5602\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"XRP Theft Case Takes Twist as Accused Files Countersuit\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Kirk West filed a countersuit against Nancy Jones, claiming the 5.5 million XRP and US$400k in cash were shared relationship assets, not stolen property. West, an alleged \u201ccrypto expert,\u201d is demanding half of their combined wealth, including US$11.6 million in XRP and US$5 million in physical gold and silver. 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West, an alleged \u201ccrypto expert,\u201d is demanding half of their combined wealth, including US$11.6 million in XRP and US$5 million in physical gold and silver. Jones alleges West stole her Ledger","og_url":"https:\/\/cryptonews.uk.com\/?p=5602","og_site_name":"Crypto News: Latest Cryptocurrency News and Analysis","article_published_time":"2026-01-14T08:44:37+00:00","author":"\u884c\u653f","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"\u884c\u653f","Est. reading time":"2 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/cryptonews.uk.com\/?p=5602","url":"https:\/\/cryptonews.uk.com\/?p=5602","name":"XRP Theft Case Takes Twist as Accused Files Countersuit - Crypto News: Latest Cryptocurrency News and Analysis","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/cryptonews.uk.com\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/cryptonews.uk.com\/?p=5602#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/cryptonews.uk.com\/?p=5602#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/cryptonews.uk.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/crypto-steal-xrp.jpeg","datePublished":"2026-01-14T08:44:37+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/cryptonews.uk.com\/#\/schema\/person\/822778c5844e0d16d43dce6630f4f1bf"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/cryptonews.uk.com\/?p=5602#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/cryptonews.uk.com\/?p=5602"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/cryptonews.uk.com\/?p=5602#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/cryptonews.uk.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/crypto-steal-xrp.jpeg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/cryptonews.uk.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/crypto-steal-xrp.jpeg","width":1920,"height":1097},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/cryptonews.uk.com\/?p=5602#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/cryptonews.uk.com\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"XRP Theft Case Takes Twist as Accused Files Countersuit"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/cryptonews.uk.com\/#website","url":"https:\/\/cryptonews.uk.com\/","name":"Crypto News: Latest Cryptocurrency News and Analysis","description":"Latest Crypto &amp; Bitcoin News","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/cryptonews.uk.com\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/cryptonews.uk.com\/#\/schema\/person\/822778c5844e0d16d43dce6630f4f1bf","name":"\u884c\u653f","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/cryptonews.uk.com\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/e4c2d23409b09e004cef3facbe677e95c5401f9e29680f3a311e0130c5748089?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/e4c2d23409b09e004cef3facbe677e95c5401f9e29680f3a311e0130c5748089?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"\u884c\u653f"},"sameAs":["http:\/\/demo3.aiwalls.com\/coinbase"],"url":"https:\/\/cryptonews.uk.com\/?author=1"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cryptonews.uk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5602","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cryptonews.uk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cryptonews.uk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cryptonews.uk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cryptonews.uk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5602"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cryptonews.uk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5602\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cryptonews.uk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5603"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cryptonews.uk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cryptonews.uk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cryptonews.uk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}