Judith Sheindlin, better known to millions of fans as Judge Judy, had an interesting case last week when she was forced to try to understand what Bitcoin was.

The episode, which went to air November 12, saw the good judge preside over a case lodged by a man named Dan Haahr who claimed to have been defrauded while trying to purchase a truck over eBay, Coindesk reported.

Haahr claimed that the listing was tied to a bank account held by Bitcoin trader Marlon Koland and was nothing more than a scam using a fictitious eBay front in an attempt to steal his money; in short, Haahr alleged that because Koland’s bank account was tied to the listing that he was the person behind the scam.

Koland, who told the Judge when asked what he does for a living that “I make a living day trading Bitcoin, which is a decentralized digital currency… the only thing I can compare it to is internet cash,” said in his defense that he was innocent and that he himself was the victim of a scam by someone who wanted to buy Bitcoin from him, and that the person who had scammed him had used his account in an attempt to defraud Haahr, a form of fraud commonly known as a “man in the middle” scam.

He further claimed that the bank account in question had since been closed due to this alleged third party fraudulently gaining access to it.

Despite the plea of innocence Judge Judy ruled in favor of Haahr on the grounds that Koland failed to provide adequate proof of his claims that a third party was behind the scam, saying that:

“Mr. Koland says that he, too, was a victim. He was trying to deal with something called Bitcoin, which I don’t’ understand. If you tried to explain it to me from today to tomorrow I still wouldn’t get it.”

It should be noted that although Judge Judy was a real judge before becoming a television judge, the rulings on the show have zero legal standing, so what she understood or not makes no difference to the actual law.

Koland was fined $2,000 for the alleged scam, although the show pays the fine for him versus him having to visit a Bitcoin exchange to obtain the sum in fiat currency.

A video of the episode as follows:

Image credit: screenshot/ Judge Judy