{
  "372": "**Victims:** A woman identified only by the initials \"A.T.\", in Barrie, Ontario.\n\n**Attackers:** Several assailants; the number is not recorded. All were caught.\n\n**Attack Method:** She was kidnapped and tied to a chair while her captors demanded a $1 million bitcoin ransom.\n\n**Violence Used:** Detention — taken and tied to a chair; she was stripped naked, struck in the legs with a hammer, and burned.\n\n**Crypto Demanded/Stolen:** $1 million in bitcoin was demanded; the record indicates no cryptocurrency was handed over.\n\n**Status:** She escaped, and the attackers were arrested.",
  "371": "**Victims:** A Chinese businessman (referred to only as \"K\") who ran contract nickel-mining operations in the Philippines. He was the only known survivor among more than 100 kidnappings, most of them targeting Chinese nationals, recorded in the country that year.\n\n**Attackers:** A mixed crew of local Filipino kidnappers working with a Chinese criminal syndicate led by a man known as \"Andy Lau\" and a woman known as \"Li Na\", acting on a tip from the victim's own bodyguard-driver, who had sold him out after judging him wealthy from a lavish company truck-launch event.\n\n**Attack Method:** On the morning of 12 December 2022 the bodyguard let the crew ambush the car just after it left the compound; two men in construction-worker uniforms forced their way in, hooded and handcuffed him, and switched vehicles. He was held blindfolded for six days, 12-18 December, and never saw his captors' faces.\n\n**Violence Used:** Detention — hooded, handcuffed and held blindfolded for six days; stun guns, heated coils and burns, and a knife drawn across his chest, concentrated in the first two days; he later needed two surgeries for burns and shackle wounds. He stayed deliberately compliant to limit the abuse.\n\n**Crypto Demanded/Stolen:** The captors opened at US$100 million and were negotiated down through US$50M and US$20M to a final figure. His wife withdrew cash under police escort and, inside a Manila casino the gang used to launder money, converted it to USDT (Tether) and transferred it to the kidnappers.\n\n**Status:** He was released in a remote field in Cavite on the sixth day and reunited with his wife and police. The bodyguard was arrested the following May and gave up the ring's number two; \"Andy Lau\" and others were later detained. Key suspects remain in custody with sentencing pending.",
  "370": "**Victims:** A family in Port Moody, British Columbia — a father who was a Bitcoin holder and had discussed his holdings within the local Chinese community, his wife, and their daughter.\n\n**Attackers:** Four men; two first posed as Canada Post workers delivering a parcel, with two more joining once inside. One of them, Tsz Wing Boaz Chan, was later convicted.\n\n**Attack Method:** On 27-28 April 2024 the fake couriers got the father to open the door, forced their way in and locked it, then bound all three family members with zip ties over about 13 hours while demanding access to his cryptocurrency.\n\n**Violence Used:** Detention — all three family members were bound with zip ties for about 13 hours; both parents were subjected to waterboarding and threatened with mutilation; the daughter was forced to undress, be filmed and repeat sexual phrases, and was sexually assaulted by one of the attackers.\n\n**Crypto Demanded/Stolen:** The gang first demanded 200 BTC, then lowered it to 100 BTC, and ultimately transferred about US$1.6 million in cryptocurrency before fleeing.\n\n**Status:** After the captives were wrapped in blankets and a door was closed, the daughter freed herself, escaped, and called 911. Tsz Wing Boaz Chan pleaded guilty to break-and-enter, unlawful confinement and sexual assault and was sentenced to seven years; the court described the case as one of Canada's most serious \"wrench attacks\". Details on the other suspects have not been released.",
  "369": "**Victims:** Quentin Cepeljac, a Belgian barber, lured to London.\n\n**Attackers:** A gang (number not recorded) that rented an Airbnb to stage the trap — a mistake that led to their quick arrest.\n\n**Attack Method:** Cepeljac had bragged about being a successful crypto dealer to impress a woman; she invited him to what he took to be her luxury flat, which turned out to be a bedsit set up as a trap.\n\n**Violence Used:** Detention — trapped in the bedsit; he was tortured and threatened.\n\n**Crypto Demanded/Stolen:** The gang expected around £500,000 in crypto, but he in fact held only £6.71; they settled for about £2,000 taken from his bank account.\n\n**Status:** Because the attackers had rented the Airbnb used for the trap, they were quickly identified and caught.",
  "368": "**Victims:** Gabriel Di Noto, 54, an accountant and former Central Bank inspector and deputy manager of Banco de Córdoba who latterly advised on crypto trading, in Villa Carlos Paz, Argentina. His 85-year-old father lived in the same cabin complex, which Di Noto owned.\n\n**Attackers:** A group who arrived by motorcycle overnight, aided by a woman whom investigators believe Di Noto had met on Tinder and who opened the door to them before fleeing with them — all captured on security cameras.\n\n**Attack Method:** The intruders broke into his home in the early hours, beat him, and forced access to his finances, then went on to rob his elderly father's house. Fleeing, they took Di Noto's car, leading his father to think he had been kidnapped.\n\n**Violence Used:** Detention — he was left tied and gagged. According to the family's lawyer, a preliminary hypothesis — with the full autopsy results still sealed — is that he was not killed by blows, a firearm or a blade; a deeper toxicology examination was under way into whether a heart attack or an ingested substance caused his death.\n\n**Crypto Demanded/Stolen:** The attackers emptied his accounts and took out large fraudulent loans in his name, moving the money to their own accounts; no single figure is recorded.\n\n**Status:** Di Noto was found dead, tied and gagged, inside one of his cabins. The investigation was continuing, with autopsy results pending; a woman was seen on security cameras leaving with the attackers.",
  "367": "**Victims:** A 35-year-old man in Sofia, Bulgaria.\n\n**Attackers:** Two men posing as police officers; both were arrested about two months later.\n\n**Attack Method:** The pair abducted him and drove him around while holding a gun to his head for about an hour, demanding he transfer 14 bitcoin within 24 hours.\n\n**Violence Used:** Detention — he was held at gunpoint throughout.\n\n**Crypto Demanded/Stolen:** They demanded 14 bitcoin but obtained none; they did take four of his debit cards.\n\n**Status:** The victim was released, and the two men were arrested two months later.",
  "365": "**Victims:** An unidentified man who had been hosting a cryptocurrency event at a business earlier that evening.\n\n**Attackers:** Three teenagers, with a possible fourth person directing them by phone.\n\n**Attack Method:** As he returned home, the three approached him and forced him into a car at gunpoint, then drove him to a remote desert area about an hour outside the city.\n\n**Violence Used:** Detention — he was held at gunpoint.\n\n**Crypto Demanded/Stolen:** They took about $4 million in cryptocurrency and NFTs.\n\n**Status:** The investigation was continuing; no arrests are recorded here.",
  "364": "**Victims:** An undisclosed man in central Limassol, Cyprus, who had arranged to buy cryptocurrency in person.\n\n**Attackers:** Two men who set up the meeting — one carried out the robbery while the other kept watch. A 31-year-old was arrested; the man who fled with the cash was still being sought.\n\n**Attack Method:** On Christmas Eve 2024 the victim came to a noon meeting carrying €100,000 in cash to buy crypto; as he waited in his car, one man ran up, struck him about the face, grabbed the backpack of cash, and fled on foot.\n\n**Violence Used:** No detention — a daylight snatch: he was hit across the head and face as he waited in his car.\n\n**Crypto Demanded/Stolen:** No cryptocurrency changed hands; the robbers took €100,000 in cash.\n\n**Status:** The victim detained the lookout until police arrived, leading to the 31-year-old's arrest; Limassol CID was interviewing witnesses and pursuing the second suspect and possible accomplices.",
  "362": "**Victims:** A mother and her two children in Val-de-Marne, France; the intended target was her husband, an independent cryptocurrency investor.\n\n**Attackers:** Two masked individuals.\n\n**Attack Method:** On a Tuesday afternoon around 1 October 2025 the two masked men approached the mother and children and handed her a mobile phone — a Samsung with a prepaid SIM — to pass to her husband, threatening to harm the family if he did not answer the calls.\n\n**Violence Used:** No detention — threats to harm the family; no physical violence was reported.\n\n**Crypto Demanded/Stolen:** Nothing was taken; the phone was intended to open an extortion demand against the crypto-investor husband.\n\n**Status:** When the husband returned home his wife gave him the phone, which rang four times; instead of answering he went to the police, handed the phone to investigators, and local police placed the home under surveillance.",
  "353": "**Victims:** The operators of a cryptocurrency mining farm running on the warehouse premises of the VkusVill retail chain in the village of Kuchino, near Moscow; the on-site guards were also targeted.\n\n**Attackers:** Four unknown masked men.\n\n**Attack Method:** In July 2022 the four entered the warehouse, threatened the guards with weapons and handcuffed them, then cleared out the equipment.\n\n**Violence Used:** Detention — the guards were threatened with weapons and handcuffed; no injuries were reported.\n\n**Crypto Demanded/Stolen:** They took four containers holding 100 graphics cards (mining hardware) and also stole the surveillance-recording storage to cover their tracks.\n\n**Status:** Police were searching for the perpetrators, who face up to 12 years in prison.",
  "350": "**Victims:** Alexandre, a 35-year-old former cryptocurrency trader in the Paris area.\n\n**Attackers:** Unidentified kidnappers; no arrests had been made and police said there were no strong leads at the time of reporting.\n\n**Attack Method:** He was abducted and held captive between Paris and Saint-Germain-en-Laye. Police opened an investigation on the Tuesday night after a contact of his in Algeria received a photo of him on his knees with his hands tied; his phone was geolocated to Paris's 10th arrondissement.\n\n**Violence Used:** Detention — he was strangled during his confinement and found with facial swelling and injuries; forensic technicians later collected traces from his clothing and skin.\n\n**Crypto Demanded/Stolen:** The kidnappers demanded a €10,000 ransom from his Algerian contact; the contact refused and alerted police, and no ransom was paid.\n\n**Status:** He was released and found walking home around 4:00 a.m. on the Wednesday, recognised by anti-crime squad officers who described him as \"shocked\". Reported as roughly the tenth crypto-related kidnapping in France in recent months; the case remained at an early investigative stage.",
  "349": "**Victims:** A 31-year-old man (using the pseudonym \"Valeri\") who ran a small, illegal bitcoin-mining operation out of a garage in Abkhazia.\n\n**Attackers:** Unidentified thieves who struck overnight while the premises were unoccupied.\n\n**Attack Method:** He arrived one autumn morning to find the garage door busted open and the place cleared out; the theft was part of a wave of mining-rig burglaries across Abkhazia after the territory banned power-intensive mining in 2020.\n\n**Violence Used:** None — no detention and no confrontation: an unoccupied-premises break-in (the wider wave included violent, armed raids elsewhere, but not here).\n\n**Crypto Demanded/Stolen:** The thieves took 20 mining servers worth about $10,000.\n\n**Status:** Because mining is illegal in Abkhazia he could not turn to the police; he tried to track the thieves himself without success and lacked the money to rebuild the operation.",
  "340": "**Victims:** Sergei Domogatskii, a popular Russian influencer in Bali, who said he was targeted by compatriots.\n\n**Attackers:** By his account, two men in black ski masks carried out the abduction, with three more perpetrators arriving later; one of the assailants was alleged to be another Russian.\n\n**Attack Method:** Around 10:30 p.m., as he rode a motorcycle near Sanur Beach, an Alphard car stopped in front of him and two masked men forced him inside, then took him to a house in the Jimbaran area of South Kuta.\n\n**Violence Used:** Detention — forced into a car, taken to a house in Jimbaran and released several hours later; he said he was beaten and tased, and sustained injuries to his right arm.\n\n**Crypto Demanded/Stolen:** He was forced to hand over his phone and transfer about US$4,600 in cryptocurrency; the three later arrivals then demanded a US$1 million ransom, which he could not pay.\n\n**Status:** He was released several hours later in a field near the Apurva Kempinski Hotel in South Kuta and gave a statement to Bali Police (spokesperson Sr. Comr. Ariasandy); the account is his as reported to police.",
  "334": "**Victims:** An unnamed businessman from São Paulo, lured to Goiânia, Brazil. He survived.\n\n**Attackers:** A four-man scheme — mastermind Josemar Alencar Linhares de Oliveira (who posed as an advisor to the president of the Goiás Legislative Assembly), the driver Gabriel Pires de Lima (alias \"Danilo\", who pretended to be a fellow victim), a gunman hidden in the car's trunk, and a third armed man who joined mid-journey.\n\n**Attack Method:** Planning began in February; Josemar arranged a business meeting and even offered to cover the victim's stay. The victim arrived on 24 June; soon after leaving the hotel, a man sprang from the trunk into the back seat and subdued him at gunpoint, and a third armed man joined. They rifled his suitcase and accessed his bank accounts and digital wallets on his phone.\n\n**Violence Used:** Detention — subdued at gunpoint inside the car; he was punched in the head, held with a gun to his head and ribs, and threatened with death; ultimately he was thrown from the moving car at about 30 km/h, fracturing three ribs and suffering internal bleeding before a passing truck driver rescued him.\n\n**Crypto Demanded/Stolen:** The gang aimed for 2–4 million reais in cryptocurrency but the victim could not access his wallet on the spot; they obtained only R$6,813.28 via Pix.\n\n**Status:** After about 90 minutes a police chase on the GO-020 highway ended with two suspects (Gabriel Pires de Lima and Tiago Oliveira Rocha) killed and one escaping unidentified. Josemar fled to the USA on 30 June and was arrested on arrival; he was convicted as the intellectual author and sentenced to 12 years and 9 months.",
  "323": "**Victims:** A crypto investor in Las Vegas who had been hosting a cryptocurrency event at a business in Downtown Las Vegas earlier that night.\n\n**Attackers:** Three teenagers — Belal Ashraf and Austin Fletcher, both 16 and from Pasco County, Florida, plus a third teenager who had since left the United States — with a fourth person appearing to direct them by speakerphone. Ashraf and Fletcher were certified as adults and charged with robbery, kidnapping and extortion.\n\n**Attack Method:** In November, after the event, the victim returned to his apartment complex; the three approached and forced him into the back seat of their vehicle at gunpoint, put a towel over his head and told him not to look at them, then drove him more than 70 miles across the Nevada border to White Hills, Arizona.\n\n**Violence Used:** Detention — he was held at gunpoint and hooded, and told he would live if he complied but that they had his father and would kill him if he did not.\n\n**Crypto Demanded/Stolen:** They forced his passwords and account access and took about $4 million in cryptocurrency and NFTs.\n\n**Status:** Released in the Arizona desert, he walked about five miles alone to a gas station and called a friend. Investigators (with FBI assistance) tracked a suspect vehicle from Florida; Ashraf was released on electronic monitoring and Fletcher's bail set at $4 million, while the third teenager remained abroad. (This appears to be the same incident recorded separately as case 365.)",
  "322": "**Victims:** A French man in his fifties, the father of a cryptocurrency entrepreneur whose company is based in Malta and France, in Paris.\n\n**Attackers:** An organised gang; four suspects were arrested and taken into custody.\n\n**Attack Method:** He was abducted around 10:30 a.m. on the Thursday in the 14th arrondissement of Paris and held for two days; the apartment where he was kept was reportedly being sealed off, probably to film staged hostage videos.\n\n**Violence Used:** Detention — abducted and held for two days; one of his fingers was severed.\n\n**Crypto Demanded/Stolen:** The kidnappers demanded a transfer of between €5 million and €7 million for his release.\n\n**Status:** He was freed on the Saturday night in Palaiseau (Essonne) during a police operation coordinated by the BIS with the BRB and the criminal brigade; four suspects were in custody and an organised-gang kidnapping and extortion investigation was opened.",
  "321": "**Victims:** A retired schoolteacher in Recife, Brazil — the mother of a man who works in cryptocurrency management and lives in Portugal. (The DB victim field labels this case for the son; the person actually kidnapped was his mother.)\n\n**Attackers:** A gang with at least two men in the car; four people were later arrested, including two women alleged to have received part of the ransom in crypto. They used a vehicle with a cloned licence plate and were charged with extortion through kidnapping and money laundering.\n\n**Attack Method:** The gang monitored the son's social media daily, judged the family wealthy, and mapped the mother's home and routines. On 21 March 2025 they followed her to the Forum Desembargador Benildes de Souza Ribeiro courthouse in Imbiribeira and seized her as she left, taking her to Olinda.\n\n**Violence Used:** Detention — she was held captive for more than 12 hours at gunpoint.\n\n**Crypto Demanded/Stolen:** Her son was forced to pay five bitcoins, worth about R$3.3 million at the time.\n\n**Status:** She was released near the Ouro Preto neighbourhood in Olinda. All four arrest and home-search warrants were served — two suspects arrested in Abreu e Lima and Olinda and two in Extremoz (RN).",
  "317": "**Victims:** A 59-year-old Johor businessman, abducted outside his home in Iskandar Puteri, Malaysia.\n\n**Attackers:** An organised operation split into planning/execution, item-disposal and ransom-handling groups; police named 11+ suspects — locals plus three Vietnamese (two men and a woman in their 30s), aged 23–58, several with prior records — with one still at large. Police declined to comment on a possible family tie between a suspect and the victim.\n\n**Attack Method:** He was seized at 5 a.m. on 13 October 2024 outside his home as he prepared to take a ride-hailing car to Senai International Airport for a business trip.\n\n**Violence Used:** Detention — seized outside his home and held until the ransom was paid; from the suspects police seized a Beretta pistol, 250 live rounds and a pair of handcuffs.\n\n**Crypto Demanded/Stolen:** The kidnappers first sought RM30 million, lowered to RM20 million after negotiation, reportedly paid; police recovered RM7.2 million of it — RM1.95 million cash, S$1 million (RM3.3 million) in foreign currency, and 400,000 USDT (about RM1.75 million).\n\n**Status:** The victim was released after the ransom. Police arrested 10 men and three women and extended their remand, seized the firearm and ammunition, and were still seeking one suspect; the case is being pursued under Section 3(1) of the Kidnapping Act 1961.",
  "315": "**Victims:** An undisclosed Bitcoin holder in Södertälje, Sweden — one of the well-known Swedish crypto figures targeted at home, as flagged by crypto proponent Eric Wall citing Swedish outlets LT and Aftonbladet.\n\n**Attackers:** Masked, armed men; the number involved in this incident was not specified.\n\n**Attack Method:** A home invasion, part of a pattern in which criminals identify Bitcoin holders through social media (often striking shortly after a victim discusses crypto publicly) and through Sweden's public-access laws that expose home addresses and tax records.\n\n**Violence Used:** Detention — the victim was tied up and physically abused to force access to their Bitcoin.\n\n**Crypto Demanded/Stolen:** The target was the victim's Bitcoin holdings; no amount was disclosed.\n\n**Status:** Reported second-hand via Eric Wall and Swedish media rather than a detailed case report; Cointelegraph had asked the Swedish Police Authority for details and any arrests. (Source is a round-up article; case-specific detail is limited.)",
  "312": "**Victims:** An unnamed Israeli cryptocurrency entrepreneur, robbed in his apartment in Tel Aviv; he later left the country and was left nearly penniless.\n\n**Attackers:** Robbers who broke into his home; the number was not specified and no arrests were reported.\n\n**Attack Method:** About two weeks before mid-June 2023, the robbers forced their way into his Tel Aviv apartment and made him transfer his crypto holdings to wallets they controlled.\n\n**Violence Used:** Detention — he was beaten severely and held at gunpoint; afterward a severed animal head and a hateful graffiti message were left near his door.\n\n**Crypto Demanded/Stolen:** He was forced to transfer all of his cryptocurrency, but the platform and wallet providers froze the transfers and conversions as suspicious, so neither the robbers nor the victim retained access; the amount was not disclosed.\n\n**Status:** He reported the robbery to police and left Israel; the Israel Police opened an investigation into the severed-animal-head and graffiti incident.",
  "309": "**Victims:** An unidentified woman, a cryptocurrency investor in Dubai, UAE.\n\n**Attackers:** A four-man gang of Asian expats, one of whom worked as her driver and knew she was a crypto investor and drew in the other three; all four were convicted.\n\n**Attack Method:** The driver lured her into a bogus deal, posing as wanting to buy digital currency, and had her come to a spot in Dubai Investments Park, where a group approached her and demanded she transfer her money to their account.\n\n**Violence Used:** Detention — she was assaulted, electrocuted, stripped naked and photographed for blackmail, then left on a street for several hours with her hands tied and a plastic bag over her face.\n\n**Crypto Demanded/Stolen:** They robbed her of Dh42,000 and converted the cash into bitcoin.\n\n**Status:** She ran to police; CID tracked the gang via CCTV and recovered her clothes, an electric-shock device and the nude clips from their homes. The four were sentenced to three years, fined Dh42,000 and ordered deported after their sentences.",
  "308": "**Victims:** An unnamed 23-year-old member of the Saudi Arabian royal family, who reportedly traded digital assets, in the Melbourne area of Australia.\n\n**Attackers:** Catherine Colivas, a 24-year-old Australian TikTok influencer who lured him, together with three men who ambushed him. Colivas pleaded guilty.\n\n**Attack Method:** In February 2023 Colivas met the man for drinks; when he offered to drive her home, three men jumped him and drove him off against his will, later returning him to his own home.\n\n**Violence Used:** Detention — he was bound with zip ties and threatened with having his fingers cut off; the case also involved a weapon (Colivas was convicted of recklessly causing injury and gun possession).\n\n**Crypto Demanded/Stolen:** The kidnappers demanded a $20,000 ransom, and he transferred $40,000 in Bitcoin to their accounts; they also stole several luxury items from his home before releasing him.\n\n**Status:** He was driven home and released. Colivas pleaded guilty to kidnapping, extortion, recklessly causing injury, theft and gun possession; on 16 December 2024 she received only a community corrections order (avoiding jail, having faced up to 25 years), citing her mental condition and upbringing.",
  "307": "**Victims:** A vulnerable man in the Salford / Irlam area of Greater Manchester, repeatedly targeted by a cryptocurrency gang that had used him to acquire hundreds of thousands of pounds in crypto. This record is the fourth in a series of incidents against him (see the related Salford cases).\n\n**Attackers:** Members of a seven-man crypto gang later convicted of the campaign — Jonathan Newns, David Povey, Luke Johnson, Gary Edwards, Kane Godiff, Karl Johnson and Scott Armstrong.\n\n**Attack Method:** In this fourth incident, days after an October captivity, the gang came to the victim's house again demanding more money and took him to an address on Egret Drive in Irlam — where police would later find him — placing a bag over his head.\n\n**Violence Used:** Detention — in this incident he was taken from his home and had a bag placed over his head; across the wider months-long campaign he was also drugged (with morphine on one occasion), deliberately burnt, beaten with weapons, bound with cables and locked in a cupboard.\n\n**Crypto Demanded/Stolen:** The gang repeatedly forced him to hand over cryptocurrency, having used him to acquire hundreds of thousands of pounds' worth; on an earlier occasion he was released only after paying over £100,000.\n\n**Status:** He was eventually found at the Egret Drive flat on 2 December after an anonymous tip and begged officers, \"can you take me with you?\" In January 2025 the seven men were convicted and jailed for more than 76 years between them. (The DB description and notes on this record wrongly duplicate incidents 1 and 2 and are flagged for correction.)",
  "304": "**Victims:** A middle-aged couple in north Richmond, British Columbia, Canada.\n\n**Attackers:** Multiple armed suspects, some impersonating police officers; one man, 34-year-old Jin Da Xing of Richmond, was charged with 11 offences.\n\n**Attack Method:** On 13 September 2022, according to Richmond RCMP, multiple armed suspects — some of them impersonating police — allegedly entered the couple's home.\n\n**Violence Used:** Detention — the couple were allegedly assaulted, bound and held for several hours; RCMP said they suffered non-life-threatening injuries but were left badly shaken.\n\n**Crypto Demanded/Stolen:** The suspects fled with $10 million in cryptocurrency and several luxury items; a large portion of the crypto was later recovered.\n\n**Status:** A year-long Richmond RCMP investigation (Serious Crime and Economic Crime units, with the National Crypto Support Unit) led to 11 charges against Jin Da Xing — including break and enter, robbery with a weapon, unlawful confinement, use of an imitation firearm, three counts of assault, extortion, possession of stolen property and impersonating a police officer. He is remanded awaiting trial.",
  "303": "**Victims:** An Asian investor in the Mankhool area of Dubai, UAE. A friend who had suggested the investment and passed on the 'broker' contact was also robbed and is treated by the court as a second victim.\n\n**Attackers:** A group who set up a fake Bitcoin deal — a broker who came to the victim's home to inspect the cash, and two men who then forced their way in and carried out the robbery; two people were later jailed.\n\n**Attack Method:** In July 2022 the broker came to the investor's home, checked the cash he wanted to use to buy Bitcoin, and left promising to return with a seller; he then phoned to say the seller was hesitating, and moments later two men knocked, forced their way in and immobilised the victim.\n\n**Violence Used:** Detention — he was assaulted and physically restrained, and the robbers threatened to kill him.\n\n**Crypto Demanded/Stolen:** No cryptocurrency changed hands; the robbers took a bag containing Dh183,000 in cash along with three phones, documents and bank cheques.\n\n**Status:** The Dubai Criminal Court convicted two people, sentencing them to three years, fining them the stolen amount and ordering deportation after their sentences.",
  "301": "**Victims:** The owner of an aluminium factory in the West Meru industrial area near Klang, Malaysia; the on-duty security personnel were also targeted.\n\n**Attackers:** A group of robbers; twelve men (including one Indonesian) were arrested in nine raids, and three more remained at large (Tan Jian Farn alias 'Q-Peng', 37; Herman Petrus, 41; and Abdul Rahim Mohamad Ali, 33). All the local suspects had prior criminal and drug records, while the arrested Indonesian had none.\n\n**Attack Method:** The factory was broken into and robbed early in the morning across two incidents, on 27 April and 20 May 2022; the robbers tied up the security guards.\n\n**Violence Used:** Detention — the on-duty security personnel were tied up to carry out the theft; no injuries were reported.\n\n**Crypto Demanded/Stolen:** The robbers stole 180 bitcoin mining machines (ASICs) — not bitcoin itself — a loss put at hundreds of thousands of ringgit.\n\n**Status:** Twelve men were arrested on 26–27 May and remanded for five days; cars, computers, phones and mining machines were seized, and police said the arrests solved three bitcoin-machine robbery cases in the area. Three suspects were still being sought; the case was opened under Section 395/397 of the Penal Code.",
  "299": "**Victims:** Four separate cryptocurrency investors mugged on the street in the City of London, in cases drawn from anonymised City of London police reports obtained by the Guardian.\n\n**Attackers:** Various street muggers and small gangs operating opportunistically.\n\n**Attack Method:** The muggings combined physical force with digital knowhow — seizing victims' phones and forcing them to unlock crypto apps (by facial or fingerprint verification) or exploiting PINs the thieves had watched them enter. One victim was targeted while ordering an Uber near Liverpool Street; another was lured down an alley under the guise of a drug deal and held against a wall; a third, while ill under a bridge, was forced to unlock his phone by fingerprint; a fourth had his phone and cards pickpocketed after the pub.\n\n**Violence Used:** No detention beyond the moment of the mugging — physical force and coercion: forced phone handovers, being held against a wall and forced biometric unlocks.\n\n**Crypto Demanded/Stolen:** The four losses were about £5,000 in ethereum (from a Coinbase account), £6,000 in ripple, £28,700 (including cryptocurrency), and £10,000 from a Crypto.com account.\n\n**Status:** The incidents (second half of 2021) were disclosed via a freedom-of-information request; police described such one-off street crimes as a new challenge and were expanding officer training and public-awareness efforts.",
  "298": "**Victims:** The unidentified owner of a Bitcoin trading company in the Al Nakhil area of Dubai, UAE, assaulted at his workplace.\n\n**Attackers:** A gang of nine, all later identified, arrested and convicted.\n\n**Attack Method:** In April 2022 the nine robbers knocked on the door of the company's headquarters, entered, attacked the owner and took the cash by force. (This was a workplace robbery, not an abduction.)\n\n**Violence Used:** He was assaulted during the robbery; the source on file does not say whether anyone was restrained.\n\n**Crypto Demanded/Stolen:** They stole Dh4,120,000 in cash from the Bitcoin trading company; no cryptocurrency itself was taken.\n\n**Status:** Police identified and arrested all nine; the Dubai Criminal Court sentenced them to three years followed by deportation.",
  "297": "**Victims:** A bitcoin trader in Dubai, UAE; the cash stolen belonged to his trading partner, who is a second victim in the case.\n\n**Attackers:** Four Asian men who had entered the country illegally and fled afterward; all were caught, confessed, and were jointly fined.\n\n**Attack Method:** In March 2022 a group came to his residence claiming his 'address was incorrect'; when he tried to close the door they pushed in, he fell, and they put a knife to his neck, tied him with plastic rope, took the safe key from under a table and emptied the safe.\n\n**Violence Used:** Detention — a knife was held to his neck and he was tied up with plastic rope; he was not otherwise injured.\n\n**Crypto Demanded/Stolen:** No cryptocurrency was taken; the robbers took Dh1.7 million in cash from a safe belonging to his trading partner.\n\n**Status:** He freed himself and alerted his partner and police; investigators found the men had illegally infiltrated the country and fled, then caught them in a coordinated operation. They confessed and were jointly fined Dh1.7 million.",
  "296": "**Victims:** A woman in Dubai, UAE, who wanted to buy Bitcoin for Dh300,000 and went to meet the seller with two friends.\n\n**Attackers:** A gang of four — two men who carried out the robbery with an axe and two others who kept watch; all four were convicted.\n\n**Attack Method:** She went to Al Nahda to meet the supposed seller; while the group waited, two men approached carrying an axe, threatened to harm them, and seized the bag of money and other valuables, then escaped by car.\n\n**Violence Used:** They were threatened with an axe; no injuries were reported.\n\n**Crypto Demanded/Stolen:** No Bitcoin changed hands; the robbers took a bag holding Dh300,000 in cash plus other valuables.\n\n**Status:** A passer-by heard the women's cries and noted the getaway car's plate; Dubai Police arrested a suspect the women identified, and he led officers to the others. The four were charged with robbery, sentenced to one year in jail followed by deportation, and fined Dh342,188, with the verdict open to appeal within 15 days.",
  "293": "**Victims:** An unidentified family in Sukhumi, the capital of Abkhazia.\n\n**Attackers:** Two masked men; police made one arrest.\n\n**Attack Method:** The two broke into the family's home and held them at gunpoint — part of a wave of burglaries targeting the region's illegal crypto-mining operations after Abkhazia's 2020 mining ban. (The family was held in the home, not abducted.)\n\n**Violence Used:** Detention — the family was held at gunpoint; no injuries were reported.\n\n**Crypto Demanded/Stolen:** The men escaped with three mining servers and 150,000 roubles (about $2,040) in cash.\n\n**Status:** Police made one arrest in connection with the raid.",
  "292": "**Victims:** A cryptocurrency miner in Tomsk, Russia.\n\n**Attackers:** Two Tomsk residents. One was tracked down and detained in St. Petersburg and pleaded guilty; the second was arrested later. Both are in custody and charged with especially large-scale group robbery.\n\n**Attack Method:** In October 2021 the pair attacked the miner as he was leaving home; one threatened him with an object resembling a gun and forced him back inside his apartment, where the accomplice joined and they made him log into his crypto exchange account.\n\n**Violence Used:** Detention — threatened with a gun-like object and forced back inside his home.\n\n**Crypto Demanded/Stolen:** They forced him to transfer 86 BTC from a wallet holding 90 BTC (it is unclear why they left the rest) — worth more than 360 million roubles, over US$4.8 million, at the time.\n\n**Status:** Both men are charged with robbery by a group on an especially large scale and face up to 15 years and a fine of up to 1 million roubles; the case goes to the Kirovsky Court of Tomsk. The suspect caught in St. Petersburg returned 35 million roubles (about $479,000).",
  "290": "**Victims:** Three women in Dubai, UAE — one of whom had agreed to buy cryptocurrency for Dhs300,000 and brought two friends to the meeting.\n\n**Attackers:** A gang of four (described in the report as African, one a fugitive); all were convicted.\n\n**Attack Method:** An man offered one of the women Bitcoin for Dhs300,000 and arranged to meet in Al Nahda; after the three women waited in a car, four men surprised them and ordered them to hand over the money.\n\n**Violence Used:** The women were threatened with weapons (the conviction was for robbery at knifepoint; the victims described being menaced with blunt objects); no injuries were reported.\n\n**Crypto Demanded/Stolen:** No Bitcoin changed hands; the robbers seized a bag holding Dhs300,000, a second bag holding Dhs63,000, other valuables and the women's passports, then fled by car.\n\n**Status:** A driver waiting in one of the women's cars noted the getaway plate; police identified a suspect the victims recognised, arrested him, and he led them to two others. The four were sentenced to one year in jail, fined Dhs342,000, and ordered deported.",
  "288": "**Victims:** The father (surname Ghershony; first name withheld) of Bethesda, Maryland, a cryptocurrency investor whose son was a partner on their joint account.\n\n**Attackers:** His son, Liam Ghershony, 24, who was in the grip of severe benzodiazepine, Adderall and cocaine addiction and had been advising his father on crypto.\n\n**Attack Method:** After a day of moving furniture into his father's loft and dinner out, Liam served him tea spiked with a large dose of benzodiazepine, presented as an energy boost; once his father was unconscious he used the man's phone to clear the two-step authorisation on the account.\n\n**Violence Used:** The benzodiazepine dose, large enough to knock out a non-addict, left the father unresponsive on his floor for two days; he was hospitalised for four days with severe dehydration and acute organ dysfunction.\n\n**Crypto Demanded/Stolen:** Liam moved $400,000 of bitcoin to an account he controlled and converted two-thirds of it to Ethereum, leaving notes promising his father \"the best retirement\".\n\n**Status:** His mother reported him for \"dosing\" his father. Initially charged with attempted murder, he was found to have had no intent to kill; he pleaded guilty to first-degree assault, served 125 days in jail plus two months of residential drug and mental-health treatment, with 20 years of suspended time, and entered recovery.",
  "285": "**Victims:** Dillon Attard, 27, a cryptocurrency holder in Sliema, Malta.\n\n**Attackers:** Luke Milton, a 25-year-old company director charged with misappropriation and fraud, cryptocurrency theft, money laundering and breaches of the Virtual Financial Assets Act (pleading not guilty); a business partner of Milton's also featured in the lead-up.\n\n**Attack Method:** The two met for lunch at a Sliema restaurant after Milton sought Attard's help with a small (€5,000) blockchain investment; when Attard handed his phone across the table for Milton to scan his wallet barcode, Milton allegedly pressed 'maximise', 'send' and 'confirm' in seconds while acting normally.\n\n**Violence Used:** No detention, no violence — this was a sleight-of-hand fraud, not a violent attack.\n\n**Crypto Demanded/Stolen:** About 424,671 Unizen tokens, worth roughly $700,000, were allegedly siphoned to another wallet in an irreversible transfer.\n\n**Status:** Attard snatched his phone back and alerted two police-officer friends; when police arrived Milton allegedly admitted sending the transaction but blamed Attard. The episode was caught on restaurant CCTV; Milton is charged and the case continues.",
  "279": "**Victims:** A Ho Chi Minh City businessman and bitcoin investor (referred to in the record as Le Duc Nguyen), together with his wife, children and brother-in-law, who were seized with him.\n\n**Attackers:** A group led by businessman Ho Ngoc Tai (32) that included two serving HCMC police officers (Nguyen Quoc Dung, 40, and Nguyen Anh Tuan, 28) and around 15 others, plus a hired private detective who mapped the family's routines. Tai's group blamed the victim's advice for their own 2018 crypto losses and plotted to take his bitcoin.\n\n**Attack Method:** After a staged motorbike-into-car 'accident' on 12 May 2020 failed (the victim drove off), the group learned his family was travelling from Bao Loc to HCMC and intercepted the car at Dau Giay, Dong Nai, on 17 May.\n\n**Violence Used:** Detention — the family was held in the attackers' cars over a two-hour drive; the victim and his brother-in-law were threatened with a fake gun; his wife and children were put in another car and menaced with a syringe of supposed HIV-infected blood (actually red ink); over the two-hour drive back to the city he was beaten and forced to call his brother to move 1,000 bitcoins.\n\n**Crypto Demanded/Stolen:** The gang demanded 1,000 bitcoins; investigators found 168 bitcoins (about VND37 billion / US$1.63 million) and other property were actually taken.\n\n**Status:** The family was dropped by a road in District 2, their phones and cameras taken to destroy evidence, and they reported it to police. The culprits were arrested in June 2020; two police officers and 15 others face robbery charges carrying up to life imprisonment, with no trial date set.",
  "273": "**Victims:** Kieran Hamilton (\"Kez\"), 21, a self-taught cryptocurrency trader in Manchester who had posted his newly lavish lifestyle across Instagram and Twitter.\n\n**Attackers:** Two machete-wielding men who, he believes, targeted him after local rumours — amplified by his online presence — painted him as a cash-rich drug dealer.\n\n**Attack Method:** One night, woken by noises, he went downstairs in his boxers and was confronted by the two men, who screamed at him to hand over money, drugs and watches and ordered him to empty a safe and flip his mattress (he had none of what they expected).\n\n**Violence Used:** Detention — confronted inside his own home by the two men, who stabbed and robbed him; he described the scene afterwards as looking \"like a massacre\".\n\n**Crypto Demanded/Stolen:** No cryptocurrency was taken; the attackers made off with his dog (worth about £1,000), his Apple MacBook, gold bracelets and a gold wedding ring.\n\n**Status:** Recounted by the victim as a first-person account; no arrest is recorded in the source.",
  "272": "**Victims:** An unidentified cryptocurrency miner, a resident of the Podilsky district of Kyiv, Ukraine.\n\n**Attackers:** Two brothers, born in 1988 and 1984, later detained.\n\n**Attack Method:** In March 2018 the pair waited near his home, put a sack over his head, forced him into a car and drove him out of the city.\n\n**Violence Used:** Detention — a sack over his head, forced into a car and driven out of the city; they threatened to kill him and used that to obtain his apartment keys and details of where he kept his money.\n\n**Crypto Demanded/Stolen:** They took $50,000 from him.\n\n**Status:** He was driven to Brovary and released. About eight months later the Kyiv prosecutor's office and national police detained the two brothers, charging them with especially large-scale robbery by prior conspiracy (Article 187(4)); they face up to 15 years with confiscation of property, and a petition was filed to hold them in custody.",
  "271": "**Victims:** The occupants of a home on Ballouville Road in Killingly, Connecticut — a female renter who recognised the intruders and other occupants, including a child.\n\n**Attackers:** Two Rhode Island women — Monique Delannoy-Jodoin, 59, of Manville (already under investigation for narcotics sales through the postal system), and Beatriz Viruet, 38, of Providence — both arrested and charged.\n\n**Attack Method:** In March 2018 the two reportedly forced their way into the home. Police said the dispute stemmed from a bitcoin account the female victim had opened in Delannoy-Jodoin's name; Delannoy-Jodoin wanted the passwords and money she said had been stolen from her.\n\n**Violence Used:** They pistol-whipped one occupant on the head and used an electric cattle prod on another; the renter was chased into a bathroom, which a suspect tried to break into with a hammer before she escaped to a neighbour's, and one suspect was heard telling the other to \"shoot the victims\".\n\n**Crypto Demanded/Stolen:** The dispute centred on the contested bitcoin account and its passwords; the intruders also stole money, cell phones and a television.\n\n**Status:** Both were arrested and charged — Delannoy-Jodoin with home invasion, risk of injury to a child, second-degree assault with a weapon, robbery, larceny, criminal mischief and threatening/reckless-endangerment counts, and Viruet with home invasion, first-degree robbery and breach of peace. They were held on $250,000 and $100,000 bonds and due at Danielson Superior Court.",
  "270": "**Victims:** An unidentified Odessa resident who had come to buy cryptocurrency.\n\n**Attackers:** A main suspect, taken into custody, together with accomplices who were still being sought.\n\n**Attack Method:** In January 2018 the criminals rented a short-term apartment on General Petrova Street in Odessa and arranged a meeting with the prospective buyer, who came unaware of the danger.\n\n**Violence Used:** The assailant and his accomplices beat the man.\n\n**Crypto Demanded/Stolen:** No cryptocurrency changed hands; they stole his mobile phone, jewellery and money, causing losses of nearly 1,500,000 UAH (about $57,000).\n\n**Status:** The main suspect was remanded without bail and the Odessa prosecutor's office sent an indictment to court under Article 187(4) (an especially serious robbery charge, 3–15 years with confiscation); police were still working to identify the other accomplices.",
  "266": "**Victims:** Four young cryptocurrency holders (aged 18–24) in the Busca neighbourhood of Toulouse, France.\n\n**Attackers:** Two men, aged 19 and 34, whom the victims had met through an online sales site; both were arrested.\n\n**Attack Method:** In late October 2017 the four gathered with the two men in one of their apartments; the visitors opened a suitcase, pulled out a weapon and ordered the group to transfer $20,000 in Bitcoin.\n\n**Violence Used:** Detention — the four were held at gunpoint and locked inside the apartment.\n\n**Crypto Demanded/Stolen:** The Bitcoin transfer failed; instead the two robbed the victims of their smartphones, identity papers, money and keys before locking them in.\n\n**Status:** The captives climbed over a balcony to alert police. Investigators traced the pair — one arrested in Blagnac, the other in Saint-Girons (Ariège) — and charged them with kidnapping, armed robbery and attempted extortion, with pre-trial detention.",
  "263": "**Victims:** Waleed, a trader in the Kahna area near Lahore, Pakistan, targeted for his alleged involvement in Bitcoin trading (police referred to him only as a \"businessman\").\n\n**Attackers:** A Crime Control Department (CCD) inspector, Javed Iqbal (posted at CCD Kotwali), Constable Tauseef, and two unidentified accomplices — a case officials called a major embarrassment for the provincial police.\n\n**Attack Method:** The suspects, in plain clothes, raided his home and seized his laptop, three mobile phones and the CCTV DVR (apparently to destroy evidence) before abducting him, using a rented vehicle.\n\n**Violence Used:** Detention — he was held captive and, on the second forced call to his family, threatened with death if the ransom was not paid.\n\n**Crypto Demanded/Stolen:** The kidnappers first demanded Rs50 million, then reduced it to Rs4 million after negotiation; the family paid, handing the ransom over near the Lahore Orange Line Station.\n\n**Status:** Waleed was released soon after. His family complained to Kahna Police, who arrested Inspector Javed Iqbal and Constable Tauseef and handed them to CCD Model Town for interrogation; officials framed it as a sting to root out corrupt officers.",
  "256": "**Victims:** A 42-year-old cryptocurrency professional at his property in Rambouillet, Yvelines, France.\n\n**Attackers:** Four suspects — three men and a woman — all arrested.\n\n**Attack Method:** Around 9:00 a.m. on Friday 26 September 2025 the victim saw the four scaling his fence and alerted police; a patrol surprised a man and a woman still inside the property, arrested a third suspect in a Renault Clio on the street and stopped the fourth nearby as he fled on foot.\n\n**Violence Used:** No detention — the intruders were armed (one with a switchblade, another with a fake firearm) but the attempt was foiled at the fence and no one was harmed.\n\n**Crypto Demanded/Stolen:** None; the attack was stopped before any theft and no financial harm was reported.\n\n**Status:** They had planned to target the victim for his crypto involvement. All four were placed in custody and the Versailles Brigade for the Repression of Banditry is investigating, with their phones under analysis.",
  "253": "**Victims:** An injured youth in Cambridge, Ontario, Canada (near Saginaw Parkway and Townline Road).\n\n**Attackers:** Five unknown suspects, described as Black men in their twenties wearing dark clothing and face coverings; no arrests are recorded.\n\n**Attack Method:** Around 9:48 p.m. on 5 September 2025 the victim was forced into a dark-coloured van by the five and driven off.\n\n**Violence Used:** Detention — forced into a van and driven off; inside the van he was physically assaulted and threatened with a firearm, and he was later taken to hospital with serious but non-life-threatening injuries.\n\n**Crypto Demanded/Stolen:** He was forced to transfer money into a cryptocurrency wallet; the amount was not disclosed.\n\n**Status:** The suspects released him and fled along Townline Road. Waterloo Regional Police's General Investigations Unit has an active investigation and has appealed for witnesses and dashcam or surveillance footage.",
  "252": "**Victims:** A young Swiss national (recorded as 23) kidnapped in Valence, Drôme, France.\n\n**Attackers:** Seven suspects — a primary suspect and two others, with four more arrested as investigators located the victim — facing charges of kidnapping and arbitrary detention for ransom, extortion by an organised gang with a weapon, and criminal conspiracy.\n\n**Attack Method:** He was seized in Valence and held for several days, and was found tied up in a house near the Valence-TGV station.\n\n**Violence Used:** Detention — he was held captive and found bound; the linked report does not describe the treatment further.\n\n**Crypto Demanded/Stolen:** The kidnappers demanded a ransom in cryptocurrency; there is no indication it was paid.\n\n**Status:** Acting on a 30 August tip-off, the GIGN elite unit — with the Grenoble research section and close to 150 gendarmerie judicial-police personnel — raided on 31 August, freed him and arrested seven suspects, with the case under the Lyon JIRS.",
  "249": "**Victims:** A Chinese businessman who runs a store on R.A. De Mel Mawatha in Colpetty, Colombo, Sri Lanka.\n\n**Attackers:** A group of Chinese nationals resident in Sri Lanka, who allegedly targeted a fellow countryman.\n\n**Attack Method:** He was abducted around 9:00 p.m. on Friday 22 August 2025, taken away in a vehicle and held captive in a building for about a day.\n\n**Violence Used:** Detention — he sustained injuries during the abduction and was later treated at a private hospital in Narahenpita.\n\n**Crypto Demanded/Stolen:** During his confinement the suspects transferred about US$60,000 (recorded as USDT) out of his holdings online.\n\n**Status:** The suspects abandoned him at a roadside on the Saturday afternoon; he filed a complaint with Colpetty Police and investigations are under way.",
  "248": "**Victims:** A Norwegian family in Oslo — a mother and her three children.\n\n**Attackers:** Robbers who posed as food-delivery workers; nine people were later charged, with one man apprehended. They reportedly acted on a handler's tip that the family held cryptocurrency, raising suspicion of a third-party data leak.\n\n**Attack Method:** Disguised as a food delivery, the robbers forced their way into the family's home, tied the family up, and searched the house for a Ledger hardware wallet.\n\n**Violence Used:** Detention — they tied up the family and beat the mother, threatening to shoot her unless the family handed over their cryptocurrency.\n\n**Crypto Demanded/Stolen:** They demanded the family's cryptocurrency; the record indicates no theft was completed.\n\n**Status:** Nine people were later charged, with one man apprehended. (Note: the source currently linked to this record is the wrong article — it describes a separate Suresnes, France assault — so these details come from the database record and still need a correct Oslo source.)",
  "247": "**Victims:** An unidentified man who works in cryptocurrency, a guest at the Peninsula Hotel on Kléber Avenue in the 16th arrondissement of Paris.\n\n**Attackers:** Five men, all arrested; investigators linked them to a nearby nightclub where the victim allegedly owed €40,000, leaving it unclear whether this was a crypto kidnapping or forced debt collection.\n\n**Attack Method:** On the evening of Tuesday 5 August 2025, around 7:15 p.m., five men approached the hotel guest — telling him \"you give us 400,000 euros and that's it\" — and forcibly took him to the area of the Arc de Triomphe.\n\n**Violence Used:** Detention — forcibly taken to the area of the Arc de Triomphe; he was beaten and threatened, and said the same suspects had displayed a weapon during an incident the week before.\n\n**Crypto Demanded/Stolen:** They seized a hard drive holding €2 million in bitcoin, along with his iPhone 13 Pro Max.\n\n**Status:** Anti-crime police quickly located and arrested the five, who were taken into custody at the first judicial police district on extortion charges.",
  "246": "**Victims:** A 30-year-old Chinese national in Parañaque City, Philippines; a woman who had come to the same resort to exchange money was also held and identified as a second victim.\n\n**Attackers:** Four Chinese nationals, arrested, who had initially offered to help the victim send money to China.\n\n**Attack Method:** The victim had asked them to help remit PHP 150,000 for his mother's medical treatment and had already handed over PHP 100,000; he agreed to meet at a resort-casino to complete it, but while in transit was handcuffed, blindfolded and threatened with a firearm.\n\n**Violence Used:** Detention — he was handcuffed, blindfolded and threatened with a firearm.\n\n**Crypto Demanded/Stolen:** The suspects demanded US$50,000 (about PHP 2.8 million) for his release; he was rescued before any payment.\n\n**Status:** He talked the suspects into returning his phone, contacted another Chinese national who called 911, and was rescued from the resort on 2 August by Parañaque City police and the PNP Anti-Kidnapping Group; four suspects were arrested and a second victim, a woman whose cash had been taken, was found with them.",
  "245": "**Victims:** Prince Pandey, a cryptocurrency trader in Ahmedabad, India, and the son of a retired Army Subedar Major.\n\n**Attackers:** Three men, all arrested — Karan Tarunbhai Nair (19), the acquaintance who set up the meeting, Harsh Ajaybhai Thakkar (21) and Kripalsinh Govindsingh Vihol (25), both car-rental operators; a weapon was recovered from them.\n\n**Attack Method:** Pandey had discussed a USDT cash exchange with Nair and was called to meet a supposed customer near Bapunagar Toll Plaza around 2 a.m. on 15 July 2025; on arrival he was forced into a black car with tinted glass and no number plate and moved between locations through the night.\n\n**Violence Used:** Detention — forced into a car and moved between locations through the night; he was brutally beaten and, because his crypto wallet had no strong password, repeatedly assaulted to force out his access credentials, suffering significant injuries that required hospital treatment.\n\n**Crypto Demanded/Stolen:** The kidnappers demanded he transfer 50,000 USDT (about ₹42 lakh); the record indicates no transfer was completed.\n\n**Status:** His father alerted police after failing to reach him; the Ahmedabad City Crime Branch traced the route via CCTV and surveillance and rescued him by afternoon, arresting the three accused. Police attributed the motive to a pending crypto-related financial dispute.",
  "244": "**Victims:** Dilip Gaur (recorded as Gaud), of Ramdev Nagar, and his friend Ramesh Sharma, of Subhash Chowk, in Jodhpur, Rajasthan, India.\n\n**Attackers:** Four police constables from the Mata Ka Than Police Station — Narsingh Ram, Rakesh Poonia, Laduram and Jagmal Ram — all suspended and arrested; a further officer posted elsewhere is also a suspect, not yet arrested.\n\n**Attack Method:** On 14 July 2025 around 4 p.m., as the pair parked at a mall near Manji Ka Hatha, constable Jagmal (in uniform) and three or four others in plain clothes intimidated them, forced Dilip from the driver's seat, took over the car, and drove them to the Mata Ka Than Police Station.\n\n**Violence Used:** Detention — the pair were driven to a police station and held until about 8:30 p.m.; they intimidated the pair, forced them to sign documents, and threatened to implicate them in false criminal charges.\n\n**Crypto Demanded/Stolen:** They extorted about ₹50,000 from each of the two (₹1 lakh in cash), then used Dilip's wife's ATM card to have Ramesh withdraw a further ₹1 lakh — ₹2 lakh in cash in all — and used Dilip's phone to transfer cryptocurrency (USDT, about ₹8.6 lakh) to an associate.\n\n**Status:** The two were released around 8:30 p.m. Dilip complained to police; a case was registered at Mahamandir Police Station under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, the four constables were arrested, and a fifth officer remains a suspect.",
  "243": "**Victims:** A 38-year-old man in Queens, New York.\n\n**Attackers:** Six men; no arrests are recorded and their motive was unclear.\n\n**Attack Method:** On 8 July 2025, after dinner with a friend on Long Island, he was dropped at his car in Flushing (31st Rd. and Union St.); once the friend left, six men set upon him, tased him in the chest and drove him to an unknown location.\n\n**Violence Used:** Detention — he was tased in the chest and handcuffed while the suspects tried to extract money from him.\n\n**Crypto Demanded/Stolen:** He handed over about 900,000 yen (more than $6,000), taken both by wire from a bank account and from a cryptocurrency account.\n\n**Status:** He was held for about ten days, then dropped back at his car; he drove to NewYork-Presbyterian Queens, called 911 just before 5 a.m., and told the NYPD what happened, but decided he did not need medical treatment.",
  "242": "**Victims:** A woman in Suresnes (Hauts-de-Seine), near Paris; the arrested suspect said he had targeted her via social media over the couple's cryptocurrency holdings. Her husband and children witnessed the attack.\n\n**Attackers:** Two men. One was arrested nearby carrying two knives and a cleaver; the second remained wanted.\n\n**Attack Method:** On the afternoon of Monday 7 July 2025 the two entered her home; one repeatedly punched her in the face (about ten blows) while the other tried to reach the flat's private spaces, seeking the credentials to her crypto wallet. The arrested man said he had identified her through social media.\n\n**Violence Used:** Detention — the two forced entry and held her in her own home while beating her: she was punched in the face roughly ten times in front of her family and taken to hospital; the attackers fled when the husband appeared.\n\n**Crypto Demanded/Stolen:** The attackers sought to force her to hand over her crypto-wallet credentials; the husband's intervention and police arrival stopped them, and nothing was taken.\n\n**Status:** One assailant was arrested nearby with two knives and a cleaver; the second is still wanted. The Hauts-de-Seine judicial police opened an investigation for attempted robbery with violence and are examining whether the pair belong to a larger group targeting crypto holders.",
  "240": "**Victims:** Sriharsha V., a 33-year-old businessman from Kengeri New Town, Bengaluru, India, who came to the meeting with two friends.\n\n**Attackers:** A gang of six to seven men, plus the middleman \"Benjamin Harsha\" who set up the meeting; police detained Benjamin and one other and were questioning them.\n\n**Attack Method:** Sriharsha had raised ₹2 crore to buy machinery from Germany and meant to convert the cash to USDT; a friend introduced him to Benjamin, who told him to bring the cash to MS Palya Circle in Vidyaranyapura on 25 June. As Benjamin's group counted the money in a shop, six to seven men barged in around 4:30 p.m. and demanded it.\n\n**Violence Used:** Detention — the gang locked the victims in the shop before fleeing (they escaped through the shutters); when the victims resisted, two of the men pulled out knives and threatened to kill them.\n\n**Crypto Demanded/Stolen:** No cryptocurrency changed hands; the gang seized the group's mobile phones and stuffed the ₹2 crore in cash into a gunny bag.\n\n**Status:** The gang warned the victims off reporting it and locked them in the shop before fleeing; they escaped through the shutters. Police registered a case, detained Benjamin and another man, and Sriharsha said he could identify the attackers.",
  "238": "**Victims:** A 23-year-old man in Maisons-Alfort, France, and his partner, who was used to deliver the ransom.\n\n**Attackers:** A well-informed team plus an accomplice who collected the ransom; the number was not specified and no arrests were reported in this case.\n\n**Attack Method:** In a carefully planned operation on 17 June 2025, the couple went shopping by car; while the man waited to park, his partner was drawn away by a fake message about a work emergency and went home alone. A video call then instructed her to leave a Ledger crypto wallet and €5,000 in cash in a bag outside the building.\n\n**Violence Used:** Detention — the man was held and later released in Créteil; investigators say the man was subjected to violence to make him reveal the wallet and ransom details.\n\n**Crypto Demanded/Stolen:** The abductors demanded a Ledger hardware wallet plus €5,000 in cash; the partner left the bag and an accomplice collected it, though it is not known whether the wallet held any funds.\n\n**Status:** Around 5 p.m. the man, released in Créteil, reached his partner unharmed. The Val-de-Marne judicial police opened an inquiry for kidnapping and organised detention, calling it a sensitive case amid a run of similar crypto-wallet abductions.",
  "237": "**Victims:** A 26-year-old cryptocurrency trader who makes TikTok content (about 40,000 followers), in Juvisy-sur-Orge, northern France.\n\n**Attackers:** Four men; no arrests were reported.\n\n**Attack Method:** On the night of Friday 13 June 2025 the four seized him as he returned home and forced him into a stolen vehicle, demanding he hand over €50,000 (about $57,000) in cryptocurrency.\n\n**Violence Used:** Detention — forced into a stolen vehicle and held until the next day; he was beaten during the incident and was later granted six days of work-incapacity benefit.\n\n**Crypto Demanded/Stolen:** They demanded €50,000 in crypto, but he showed them the low balance in his account and nothing was taken.\n\n**Status:** He was released the next day once the kidnappers realised he could not pay. France's Organised and Specialised Crime Division is investigating.",
  "236": "**Victims:** A young Russian couple who run a cryptocurrency business — a 30-year-old woman and her 27-year-old partner — in the Palermo neighbourhood of Buenos Aires, Argentina.\n\n**Attackers:** Two Chechen men who had rented a first-floor apartment (on Ravignani, near Gorriti) for the previous two nights; both were named as the main suspects and placed under an Interpol red notice.\n\n**Attack Method:** The couple were invited to dinner at the apartment on the Friday night, then taken hostage and tied up while a ransom was demanded.\n\n**Violence Used:** Detention — the couple were tied up; the woman called for help in English from the balcony.\n\n**Crypto Demanded/Stolen:** A ransom of $43,000 in digital currency was paid by a compatriot friend, transferred after a conversation with the captors.\n\n**Status:** Around 11 p.m. the woman's cries from the balcony were heard by staff at the neighbouring restaurant, who called 911; City Police found the couple bound. The two suspects fled Argentina by plane from Ezeiza to the UAE within hours and are under Interpol red notice; the case is with the Federal Police's Southern Anti-Kidnapping Department under judge María Romilda Servini.",
  "235": "**Victims:** A cryptocurrency entrepreneur near Nantes (Loire-Atlantique), France, targeted for the fortune he had made in crypto.\n\n**Attackers:** A ten-man commando — hooded, gloved and dressed in black — waiting in two vehicles; all were arrested. The suspected mastermind, 24-year-old Badiss Mohamed Amide Bajjou (subject of an Interpol red notice), was later arrested in Tangier, Morocco.\n\n**Attack Method:** On a Monday morning in late May 2025 near Nantes, the Banditry Repression Brigade (BRB) of the Paris judicial police had the two parked vehicles under surveillance and identified the men as a commando preparing to kidnap the entrepreneur.\n\n**Violence Used:** No detention — the plot was foiled before any attack; no one was harmed.\n\n**Crypto Demanded/Stolen:** None; the kidnapping was prevented before it began.\n\n**Status:** Police arrested the ten men at the scene. The suspected ringleader was later arrested in Morocco; French authorities charged 25 people, including six minors, over the wider series of crypto kidnappings and attempts.",
  "234": "**Victims:** A group of Korean investors — ten men were invited and two were led into the room — in Seoul, South Korea; one was found bleeding after the ambush.\n\n**Attackers:** Three Russian nationals. One man in his 20s was arrested in Busan on 27 May and charged with assault and attempted robbery; the other two fled the country.\n\n**Attack Method:** On 21 May 2025 the suspects posed as parties to a peer-to-peer crypto transaction and invited ten Korean men to a hotel in Seoul's Gangseo District; two were called up to the room while the rest waited in the lobby, and the suspects — wearing protective vests — ambushed them with a replica handgun and a telescopic baton and bound their hands with cable ties.\n\n**Violence Used:** Detention — the victims were ambushed with a replica handgun and a baton and tied with cable ties; one was found bleeding in the lobby.\n\n**Crypto Demanded/Stolen:** The suspects tried to take 1 billion won (about $730,000) in cash meant for the crypto deal, but the robbery failed and nothing was taken.\n\n**Status:** One victim escaped and raised the alarm, and the suspects fled empty-handed. Police seized a replica firearm, batons, vests and a money counter, arrested one suspect in Busan, and sought Interpol's help to trace the two who had fled overseas.",
  "233": "**Victims:** A 46-year-old mother and her 22-year-old son — a cryptocurrency trader who is autistic — in Normandy, France.\n\n**Attackers:** A team of criminals; five suspects, aged 18 to 24, were arrested, indicted and imprisoned.\n\n**Attack Method:** On 18 May 2025 the mother and son told police their home was being watched by a team planning to abduct them; investigators found a GPS tracker under the family car and signs the house had been scouted. On 11 June, as vehicles closed in on the home, the BRI of Rouen and OFAST Le Havre intercepted them, recovering a knife and a roll of tape.\n\n**Violence Used:** No detention — the plot was foiled before any attack; the plan had been to cut a knuckle from the mother's finger to force her son to empty his wallet.\n\n**Crypto Demanded/Stolen:** None; the scheme to force the son to drain his crypto wallet was prevented.\n\n**Status:** Five suspects were arrested at the interception and were indicted and incarcerated; the case was handled by the Lille JIRS with Le Havre investigators and the central anti-organised-crime office.",
  "232": "**Victims:** Festo Ivaibi, founder of the cryptocurrency education hub Mitroplus Labs, abducted near his home on Bunamwaya Road in Kampala, Uganda.\n\n**Attackers:** Armed men in military uniforms who claimed to be UPDF \"security operatives\"; according to a statement from Mitroplus's Afro Token Project, the plot allegedly involved informants posing as crypto traders, rogue officers and two Chinese nationals.\n\n**Attack Method:** On 17 May 2025 the armed, uniformed group seized Ivaibi near his residence.\n\n**Violence Used:** Detention — he was held at gunpoint and forced to unlock his cryptocurrency wallets.\n\n**Crypto Demanded/Stolen:** He was made to transfer about $500,000 in cryptocurrency to a wallet the attackers controlled, and a portion of Afro Token (a meme coin) was sold under coercion.\n\n**Status:** Mitroplus Labs claims at least 48 similar attacks have taken place in Uganda, most of them unreported; Decrypt said it had approached Mitroplus and the UPDF for comment.",
  "231": "**Victims:** A cryptocurrency mining company operating in Coronel Bogado, Paraguay.\n\n**Attackers:** Chinese nationals; during a raid on a farm in San Pedro del Paraná investigators found four Chinese men — described as programmers who had worked at the company for months — in a closed room, three of whom had entered Paraguay illegally through Bolivia and Brazil.\n\n**Attack Method:** An attempted assault on the mining company on 14 May 2025 set off a chase and a shootout with the National Police, and the ensuing investigation located the men on the nearby farm.\n\n**Violence Used:** The incident involved a shootout with police; according to the record no one was hurt.\n\n**Crypto Demanded/Stolen:** Nothing was taken — police drove the assailants off before anything was stolen.\n\n**Status:** The prosecutor, Irene Rolón, said the foreigners were not victims of trafficking; the three who lacked legal entry were expelled from Paraguay, and the company owner was asked to produce the documentation for hiring them.",
  "230": "**Victims:** The 34-year-old daughter of the CEO of the cryptocurrency platform Paymium, attacked together with her 2-year-old child in the 11th arrondissement of Paris.\n\n**Attackers:** Three hooded men, one of whom apparently dropped a handgun (unknown whether real or fake); the record notes the ringleader was later arrested.\n\n**Attack Method:** On the morning of 13 May 2025, around 8:20 a.m. at rue Pache, the three tried to force the mother into a Chronopost-branded van.\n\n**Violence Used:** No detention — the attempt to force her into the van was fought off. The child's father intervened and was struck by the attackers as the victim cried out and many passers-by looked on.\n\n**Crypto Demanded/Stolen:** None — the kidnapping attempt was foiled.\n\n**Status:** The father's intervention drove the men off; they fled back into the van's trunk, and the vehicle was found nearby soon after. The Paris prosecutor tasked the banditry repression brigade with the investigation.",
  "229": "**Victims:** Jacob Irwin-Cline, 30, an American tourist and former software developer from Portland, Oregon, on a short London layover; he says he built his wealth investing in Bitcoin as a teenager.\n\n**Attackers:** A fake Uber driver calling himself \"Mohammed\", whom Jacob believes was part of an organised ring in which a second conspirator controlled the genuine Uber account. No arrests were made.\n\n**Attack Method:** In the early hours of 9 May 2025, after a night out at a Soho bar, Jacob got into a dark sedan — not the Prius shown in his app — whose driver flagged him by his app alias, then offered him a cigarette Jacob believes was spiked with a drug (possibly scopolamine), leaving him docile while the driver took his phone passcode and app passkeys.\n\n**Violence Used:** Possible detention — by his own account he was drugged and became docile in the car; as he was made to get out in a residential area near Golders Green the car drove off and struck his leg, leaving him unable to walk.\n\n**Crypto Demanded/Stolen:** About $123,000 was drained from his accounts — his XRP wallet fell from roughly $73,000 to under $1,000 and his Bitcoin wallet from about $50,000 to under $10, plus smaller coins — and his laptop was remotely wiped; he believes he traced the funds toward wallets on the MEXC and BTSE exchanges.\n\n**Status:** A stranger arranged a taxi back to his hostel, and he reported the theft to the Metropolitan Police, Action Fraud and the FBI's cybercrime unit. Police confirmed a report with no arrests and enquiries ongoing, and Jacob is pessimistic about recovering the funds.",
  "228": "**Victims:** A 28-year-old Italian man (the linked report withholds his name) who arrived in New York from Italy on 6 May 2025.\n\n**Attackers:** John Woeltz, 37, a crypto entrepreneur dubbed the \"crypto king of Kentucky\", and William Duplessie, 33; a 24-year-old woman was also arrested but is not being prosecuted at this time.\n\n**Attack Method:** Prosecutors say the two lured the man from Italy by threatening to have his family killed; at Woeltz's eight-bedroom SoHo townhouse he was stripped of his electronics and passport, bound, and held for about 17 days.\n\n**Violence Used:** Detention — bound and held for about 17 days at the townhouse; he was beaten, given electric shocks, forced to smoke crack cocaine, pistol-whipped, cut with a small chainsaw, doused in tequila and set alight before the fire was put out, and hung over a stairwell ledge — all to force him to reveal his Bitcoin password.\n\n**Crypto Demanded/Stolen:** The torture was aimed at extracting his Bitcoin password; he did not give it up and nothing was taken.\n\n**Status:** On 23 May he escaped — saying he would fetch the password from his laptop, then fleeing downstairs to a traffic officer — and was hospitalised in stable condition. Police recovered a saw, crack cocaine, a firearm and Polaroids of the victim with a gun to his head. Woeltz was arrested on 23 May and Duplessie surrendered on 27 May; both were indicted on about a dozen counts, denied bail, and pleaded not guilty, and the defence disputes the account.",
  "224": "**Victims:** Mohammed Ismail, seized in PIB Colony, Karachi, Pakistan.\n\n**Attackers:** A gang of six to seven men who posed as officials of the FIA, the Counter-Terrorism Department and intelligence agencies; four were arrested — Imtiaz alias Salman, Ubaid Rehman alias Abi, Shahid alias Moosa and Saleem.\n\n**Attack Method:** On 13 April 2025 the gang — using a black Vigo (a four-wheel drive) with a fake government plate, masks, arms, walkie-talkies and handcuffs — abducted Ismail and took him to a warehouse in Steel Town.\n\n**Violence Used:** Detention — abducted and held by an armed group that accused him of illegal Hundi/Hawala dealing and threatened him.\n\n**Crypto Demanded/Stolen:** They questioned him about his Bitcoin business, took his iPhone, and said they would contact him about money later.\n\n**Status:** They released him on Shahra-e-Faisal. Acting on an intelligence tip, the Counter-Terrorism Department arrested four suspects near Parking Plaza in Saddar and recovered snatched phones, three pistols, walkie-talkies, handcuffs and the fake-plated Vigo.",
  "222": "**Victims:** A 27-year-old Turkish man who had just arrived in Hong Kong for cryptocurrency trading, in Tsim Sha Tsui.\n\n**Attackers:** Two assailants (one carrying a knife) plus two accomplices who helped dispose of the weapon; four South Asian men, aged 17 to 31, were arrested.\n\n**Attack Method:** On 27 March 2025 at about 4:45 p.m. outside 68 Nathan Road, as he carried a bag holding €5 million in cash, two men attacked him from behind, one brandishing a knife.\n\n**Violence Used:** No detention — a street attack from behind. He was slashed, suffering a 10-centimetre knife wound to the forehead (with no damage to his eyes or vital organs), and fell to the ground.\n\n**Crypto Demanded/Stolen:** Nothing was taken — he fought back and kept the bag of €5 million.\n\n**Status:** The attackers fled toward Jordan Road; the injured man reported the attack himself and was hospitalised. Police reviewed CCTV, arrested four South Asian men in Jordan and Mong Kok, recovered clothing and four phones, and were still searching for the discarded knife.",
  "221": "**Victims:** Rodrigo Perez, a Spanish businessman linked to financial crimes in Paraguay and Ecuador who was himself wanted by Interpol, seized in São Paulo, Brazil.\n\n**Attackers:** Men in fake police uniforms; Ronaldo Batista, a retired military policeman, was arrested and confessed, while the second kidnapper remained at large. Authorities did not rule out gang involvement.\n\n**Attack Method:** In late March 2025 the fake officers used an official-looking truck to take Perez to a makeshift prison, where he was held for five days tied to a bed.\n\n**Violence Used:** Detention — held for five days tied to a bed in a makeshift prison; he was kept drugged with sleeping pills, restrained and harassed throughout.\n\n**Crypto Demanded/Stolen:** By his account the kidnappers took close to $50 million in cryptocurrency from him.\n\n**Status:** Perez escaped by winning his captors' trust and drugging the guard with the same sleeping pills; when he reported the kidnapping, authorities found he was himself Interpol-wanted. They continue to treat him as a victim while aware of his alleged crimes, and Batista was arrested when the site was raided.",
  "219": "**Victims:** A 41-year-old man surnamed Wong, in the Cheung Sha Wan area of Hong Kong.\n\n**Attackers:** An unidentified man, still at large (about 1.75 m tall, in a black long-sleeved top).\n\n**Attack Method:** Late on 13 March 2025, around 11:39 p.m. on Lai Wan Road near the Lai Chi Kok Government Offices, a man approached Wong from behind and snatched the plastic bag of cash he was carrying, then fled toward King Lai Path. Earlier that evening Wong had met a buyer on Sung Wong Toi Road to complete a cryptocurrency sale and was on his way home.\n\n**Violence Used:** No detention and no assault reported — the bag was snatched from behind. (The database description's \"beaten with a stick\" is not supported by the linked article.)\n\n**Crypto Demanded/Stolen:** He had just sold about HK$318,000 of cryptocurrency and was robbed of the HK$318,000 in cash he had received for it.\n\n**Status:** The suspect fled and remains at large; police searched the area without success, classified the case as robbery, and continued the investigation.",
  "218": "**Victims:** Kaitlyn Siragusa, the streamer known as \"Amouranth\", at her home in Houston, Texas; she had posted a screenshot of a roughly $20 million Bitcoin wallet.\n\n**Attackers:** An armed gang; a group of teenagers aged 16 to 19 were later arrested and charged, three of them with aggravated kidnapping and aggravated robbery with a deadly weapon.\n\n**Attack Method:** On 2 March 2025 the gang carried out a home invasion, pulling her from her bed, holding a gun to her head, demanding cryptocurrency and telling her to log in to her phone.\n\n**Violence Used:** Detention — she was held at gunpoint in her home and suffered a scalp laceration that needed stitches; she said she shot one of the intruders during the confrontation.\n\n**Crypto Demanded/Stolen:** The attackers demanded crypto but did not obtain it; the one item they took was her MacBook, which she later tracked using Find My.\n\n**Status:** She was hospitalised and said she was safe. About two weeks later authorities arrested and charged a group of teenagers aged 16 to 19, two of whom remained in custody on $150,000 and $200,000 bonds."
}