feat(sources): fetch linked URLs for the 252 spreadsheet-only cases

Until now only cases 357+ (plus a few older ones) had their linked URLs
fetched; the other 252 dossiers held just the text pasted into the
spreadsheet, often only the lede. This pass fetches every linked URL for
those cases so the full text is on file before link rot takes it.

- stage_all.py: new --include-sheet-cases flag that lifts the skip on
  cases holding spreadsheet articles. Resumable as before.
- staging/: raw extracts and index.json for the 252 cases.
- sourced-articles.json, case-files-manifest.json: 188 new UNTRIMMED
  blocks. 179 cases gained at least one fetched article; 73 got none
  (49 BLOCKED, 18 THIN, 9 DEAD, 4 video/social, 3 ERROR).
- sources/*.txt: rebuilt with build_cases.py --all. Sheet pastes are
  kept; fetched blocks sit beside them under the NOT YET TRIMMED banner.
  Files previously committed with CRLF are now LF.
- wayback-availability.json: Wayback snapshots exist for 73 of the 98
  failed URL slots; input for an archive-fetch pass.
- README-START-HERE.md: progress note and next step.

verify_all.py PASSES (1836 checks).

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5.1 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01GZZENdTLzNGsbNy4DyF1yt
This commit is contained in:
StellarCrow
2026-09-05 15:02:39 +02:00
co-authored by Claude Fable 5.1
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The Instagrammer Stabbed and Robbed After Posting His Lavish Life Online
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One night, while sleeping in his Manchester home, 21-year-old Kieran Hamilton was awoken by some strange noises. As he came to, he thought he heard footsteps on the stairs. His pair of French bulldogs often fight, and he presumed one had broken through the baby gate and run upstairs.
Bleary eyed and in his boxer shorts, Kieran who goes by “Kez” got out of bed to investigate and was met by two machete-wielding men screaming at him, demanding money, drugs and watches. “I got stabbed because of my Instagram presence,” he explains over the phone. “It looked like a massacre had taken place when they left.”
Before the robbery, Kez had been a cryptocurrency trader. A high school dropout living on a council estate, he taught himself via trial and error, and through YouTube tutorials, investing savings from his day job working at an 02 phone shop. He didnt have the most auspicious start his account was hacked and he lost the £3,000 hed saved to invest but over time his skills grew, and so did his income. He claims he was making around £50,000 a month, and soon his Twitter and Instagram profiles began to reflect this luxe new lifestyle: a plush new house, holiday snaps, overflowing shopping bags, sports cars, champagne, Rolex watches and a set of newly whitened teeth.
Rumours had begun to spread locally about how Kez had accumulated so much wealth in such a short space of time. “Im from a lower working class background, and some people think its not possible for me to be where I am without being involved in selling drugs,” he says. “Ive been asked where my money is from, with people being like, Theres no way you can make money on the Internet. Rumours then start spreading like a whirlwind, and people start coming up with their own conspiracy theories.”
Kez believes these rumours coupled with his online presence led to him being tracked and targeted as a cash-rich drug dealer, with the two men ordering him to empty his safe, flip his mattress and hand over his cash. “I dont sell drugs, I dont have a safe and I dont keep money under my mattress,” he says. “Thats how I know these guys had been given inaccurate information.”
Kezs case may be extreme, due to the intense violence of the incident, but his experience falls under a growing area of crime. According to a 2018 report, one in 12 Brits have reported a burglary after posting on social media, with more than half admitting they had location tagging turned on. Another survey found that 78 percent of burglars use social media as a tracking method to see who they want to target. A burglary ring in the US used social media to track wealthy people who had shared their valuable art collections online. One mayoral candidate in Houston was relieved of his works by Andy Warhol, Picasso and Monet after he hosted an art gala at his home, making it easy for thieves to know what he had, and where.
The Saudi influencer Hitham was mugged coming out of a London restaurant, while the home of the extremely online YouTube star PewDiePie was robbed just before Christmas. This came after hed posted a video to his fans urging them to stop turning up at his house because people had been able to work out where he lived. A few years ago, ex-footballer John Terry decided to announce to his 3.4 million Instagram followers that he and his family were on a delightful skiing holiday. Burglars thanked him for the heads up by invading his empty home with axes and stealing £400,000 worth of items.
Crimes related to posting images of your lifestyle online often dubbed “Insta-Bragging” have become such an issue that MoneySupermarket warned that insurers may stop paying out on some theft cases. This is because a standard contents insurance contract has a reasonable care clause, i.e. if you announce that your house is full of super expensive goodies, and that youre off sunning yourself on a yacht in another country, that could qualify as being careless.
Kim Kardashian was famously robbed at gunpoint in Paris in 2016 after being tracked online but the worrying thing about Kezs case, and others like it, is that he isnt that rich or famous. He has a modest online following, came into a bit of money and ended up with a gaping machete wound in his arm.
That night, it was Kezs sarcasm that landed him in the most trouble. “They were screaming and threatening,” he recalls. “And Im a very sarcastic person. I cant help it. They were saying, We want this, we want that, and I was just like, Well, I dont have that. I offered some bottles of champagne, which were about £300 a bottle, and they said, We dont want them, we want your watch and drugs. So I said, Well, youre in the wrong house, mate.’”
One of the attackers since jailed had been prodding and lightly stabbing Kez with the knife as he walked him around the house demanding items. “I did get a sense from his character that he didnt really have it in him,” says Kez. “He was stabbing me a lot of times, but he wasnt really piercing the skin.” Soon enough, frustrated that Kez didnt have drugs and cash, the attacker punched him in the face.
“It didnt really hurt, and then he punched me again, and I thought, Its going to hurt if he carries on doing this,’” says Kez. “Hes got a knife in his hand, so I couldnt really defend myself, so the third time he punched me I thought, Im going to pretend hes knocked me out. So I stumbled back and fell on the floor, but he knew I was blagging it. Then, after that, hes just stabbing me pure times. I was pretty good at dodging them, but he did get me. He didnt have it in him until I really annoyed him. Then he was serious.”
In the end, the thieves took Kezs laptop, phone and his dog, Rambo. Kez made posters and offered £1,000 for Rambos return, but it would be a year before he heard anything. “I got a call one day saying a dog microchipped in my name had been found,” he recalls. “I was buzzing to get him back.”
Kez is more into property than crypto these days, and while hes not as active online as he used to be, he feels people are prone to misunderstanding the role and function of having such a presence.
“Some people think youre posting to show off,” he says. “Its not. Why would I want to show off and get stabbed? I post to document my success, to show that people coming from lower working class backgrounds can do it, and to show theres countless ways to make money on the internet. People can still look at all that negatively, but I think that depends on the person. Social media is basically part of the job for me. Im not saying that posting online isnt real, but you only post the best parts of your life. My Insta is basically like my brand.”
Any lessons learned? “You just have to be careful,” he says. “When youre out there on social media, you have to be prepared, so now every day Im prepared.” Prepared how? “I cant tell you how, but its all legal. Security is a lot higher. Just in case the demons come lurking again.”
Crime, cryptocurrency, influencers, Instagram, Social Media
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[
{
"case": 273,
"n": 1,
"field": "url",
"url": "https://www.vice.com/en/article/instagram-influencer-robbed-cryptocurrency/",
"host": "vice.com",
"fetched_at": "2026-09-05T12:45:30+00:00",
"verdict": "FETCHED",
"method": "raw",
"http": 200,
"chars": 7497,
"sha256": "f7ef96c3537e4b451e27017da8c64721f62757d9b7bcb5bfc1946615562181fc",
"final_url": null
}
]