Criminal Gang Physically Assaulting People for Their Cryptocurrency
Full article152 words · extracted from schneier.com · click to collapse
This is pretty horrific:
…a group of men behind a violent crime spree designed to compel victims to hand over access to their cryptocurrency savings. That announcement and the criminal complaint laying out charges against St. Felix focused largely on a single theft of cryptocurrency from an elderly North Carolina couple, whose home St. Felix and one of his accomplices broke into before physically assaulting the two victims—both in their seventies—and forcing them to transfer more than $150,000 in Bitcoin and Ether to the thieves’ crypto wallets.
I think cryptocurrencies are more susceptible to this kind of real-world attack because they are largely outside the conventional banking system. Yet another reason to stay away from them.
Tags: bitcoin, crime, cryptocurrency, extortion, law enforcement, physical security, torture
Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.
Text extracted automatically; images, tables and formatting may be missing. Original: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2024/07/criminal-gang-physically-assaulting-people-for-their-cryptocurrency.html