John “Lick” Daghita is moving closer to a U.S. courtroom after French judicial authorities approved his extradition in the alleged $46 million crypto theft tied to U.S. government-controlled
John “Lick” Daghita is moving closer to a U.S. courtroom after French judicial authorities approved his extradition in the alleged $46 million crypto theft tied to U.S. government-controlled assets.
The chamber of instruction at the Basse-Terre Court of Appeal in Guadeloupe validated the transfer request after Daghita’s March arrest in Saint Martin. He had been held at the Basse-Terre prison while the extradition file moved through French courts. The process can sometimes stretch for months, but the court approval, the U.S. request, and Daghita’s own push to face the case in the United States could shorten the timeline.
The allegations still need to be tested in court. Until then, the case remains an unusual crypto-crime file that moved from public wallet tracing into cross-border custody proceedings.
The case centers on more than $46 million in cryptocurrency allegedly taken from wallets linked to the U.S. Marshals Service, the federal agency that handles seized and forfeited assets in criminal cases. FBI Director Kash Patel publicly identified Daghita in March as a U.S. government contractor accused of stealing the funds, after a joint operation with French gendarmes ended with his arrest on the French side of Saint Martin.
French and U.S. authorities said the search recovered a handgun, a cash-filled briefcase, phones, high-end computer equipment, and digital-storage material. The seized items matter because this is not being treated as a typical exchange hack or phishing drain. The accusation points toward an access-control failure around government-held crypto.
For custody teams, the uncomfortable part is clear. The strongest cold-storage policy can still break down when operational access, contractor permissions, internal controls, and human incentives are not separated tightly enough.
The public trail began with a wallet flex. The episode had already pushed the case into public view after ZachXBT linked “Lick” to U.S. seizure-related funds, with a user known as “John” or “Lick” allegedly seen screen-sharing wallet balances and moving large sums in real time during a private Telegram dispute.
That display gave investigators something rare. Instead of only tracing anonymous addresses after the fact, the wallet movements were allegedly tied to a live identity signal, screen activity, and transaction behavior. The on-chain path connected the case to wallets associated with the U.S. Marshals Service, with part of the trail linked to government-controlled assets from prior seizures.
Daghita was later arrested in Saint Martin after the ZachXBT on-chain trail, turning wallet clustering, public attribution, and blockchain tracing into a coordinated FBI and French Gendarmerie operation.
The case lands at a sensitive time for government crypto custody. U.S. agencies hold major digital-asset positions through seizures, forfeitures, ransomware recoveries, exchange cases, darknet market cases, sanctions actions, and fraud investigations. Those assets require secure storage, audit trails, role separation, transaction approvals, and contractor oversight.
That creates a different risk profile from retail wallet theft. A seized-asset wallet may be controlled through legal authority, government procedure, and third-party support. If one access path is abused, the damage can move at blockchain speed before the legal system has time to react.
The same transparency that exposed the trail also adds pressure. Suspected stolen funds can be traced, clustered, bridged, mixed, and watched in real time, but that visibility only helps when investigators, custodians, exchanges, and courts move quickly enough to preserve evidence and freeze exit routes.
The next phase shifts toward the United States, where Daghita is expected to answer the allegations in federal court after extradition is completed. Recovery and forfeiture proceedings will remain central if prosecutors seek to return assets to government custody or identify any remaining funds that moved through mixers, bridges, exchanges, or other wallet clusters.
French courts have cleared the extradition path, Daghita remains tied to an alleged $46 million U.S. Marshals crypto theft, and the case is moving from Caribbean arrest headlines into the U.S. judicial system.
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