A bitcoin trader in the Netherlands was reportedly subjected to gruesome torture in front of his four-year-old daughter. A local publication suspects the man’s cryptocurrency holdings may have been the motivation for the crime.
Police in the Netherlands are investigating the brutal torture of a bitcoin trader, whose home was raided by criminals looking for cryptocurrency.
Three robbers disguised as police entered the victim's home in Drenthe and attacked him with a drill in front of his four-year-old daughter, Dutch publication De Telegraaf reported.
The hour-long ordeal also involved the victim being threatened with firearms, before the perpetrators fled in an escape vehicle. The digital nature of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies mean long and complex passwords – or private keys – are required to access assets and transfer them to another digital wallet.
Police did not reveal the identity of the victim but it is not believed any cryptocurrency was stolen during the raid.
"The investigation is ongoing. Specific details can damage the investigation," police spokesman Paul Heidanus told the publication.It is not the first time criminals have targeted cryptocurrency investors and traders, with the earliest reported instance taking place in 2015.
In February of that year, New York City firefighter Dwayne Richards was stabbed in Willamsburg, Brooklyn, by muggers who demanded he transferred bitcoin to their wallets.
Bitcoin, which is currently worth around $3,800 (£2,800), is semi-anonymous and therefore difficult to trace to a single individual.Since its peak in late 2017, bitcoin has lost close to three quarters of its value, yet still remains an attractive prospect for criminals.
In one of the most notable examples of criminals targeting holders of bitcoin, kidnappers in the Ukraine made more than $1 million in digital currency in 2017 after ransoming cryptocurrency analyst Pavel Lerner.
The UK's first bitcoin heist took place in January last year, when armed robbers broke into the home of cryptocurrency trader Danny Aston in Moulsford, South Oxfordshire.
Mr Aston was tied up during the home invasion and an unknown quantity of bitcoin was seized by the attackers.
In January 2018 two bitcoin traders from the UK were robbed at gunpoint by masked home invaders in front of the couple’s infant child. The two victims had conducted over 100,000 cryptocurrency trades are were forced to transfer their cryptocurrency balances to the robbers.
Taiwan reported its first bitcoin robbery in February 2018 when four men were arrested after pretending to want to buy Bitcoin. They managed to steal 18 bitcoin, worth $188,000 at the time, from their cryptocurrency trading victim.
In October 2018 Makaveli Lindén was arrested in France accused of murdering a Norwegian Bitcoin investor Heikki Bjørklund Paltto. The crime may or may not have been connected to Paltto’s cryptocurrency investments, some of which he’d recently cashed in reportedly to purchase an apartment.
The latest bitcoin robbery is certainly gruesome and serious with no details as yet to the value stolen. If cryptocurrency balances have been transferred to the attackers the pseudo-anonymous nature of cryptocurrency wallet addresses may make them difficult, but not impossible, to trace.
