The following year, the Times broke the news of how the FBI had searched Powell’s house as part of an investigation into allegations the Kraken founder had “hacked and cyber-stalked a nonprofit that he founded.”

Despite the dramatic description, the facts turned out to be more banal. Documents in a civil case filed by Powell against the non-profit, known as Verge, indicate the dispute turned on access to Slack and Google accounts.

In the lawsuit, filed last year in state court, Powell says that he did not hack or stalk anyone, or cut off access to the accounts. Instead, he alleges that Verge executives conspired to remove him from the board, and that they quietly put in place a new domain name and created new workplace accounts before doing so. Powell founded Verge in 2008 to support the arts in Sacramento, where he lived for many years.