A cryptocurrency investor based in London has lost almost all his digital asset investments to armed robbers following a physical attack in his home.
An X post by the victim, pseudonymously named Ram, revealed that the three thieves were armed with machetes and forced him to transfer all his crypto to certain accounts.
Investor Loses $4M Crypto to Robbers
According to Ram, the robbers were aware of his residence and knew he had crypto. Upon arrival at his home, they forced him to open his Ledger wallet and transferred over $3.7 million worth of ether (ETH) to their addresses. Ram said he was lucky not to get stabbed.
“This just happened – 3 guys physically robbed me at my home. They were armed with machetes. They knew I had crypto and knew where I lived…I’m still in a state of shock. This is one of the worst experiences of my life,” the crypto investor stated.
Data from Etherscan shows the transactions moved 1,098 ETH from one address and 13 ETH from the other. With ETH trading at around $3,400 at the time of writing, the stash is collectively worth more than $3.77 million.
Due to the theft, Ram’s wallet addresses now hold less than $63,000 worth of crypto assets, including StakeWise (SWISE), Unibot (UNIBOT), USD Coin (USDC), Staked Aave, and FOX.
Kraken Investigating Incident
Through his tweet, Ram sought the help of on-chain sleuth ZachXBT and crypto exchanges Binance, Coinbase, and Kraken to recover the funds. Digital asset influencer and investor James Crypto Guru revealed that the thieves were selling the assets on Kraken through the Bitrefill payment gateway, tagging the exchange’s support team to look into the matter.
In response to James’ tweet, the Kraken Support team disclosed that they were investigating the situation; hence, Ram faces the possibility of recovering some of his stolen assets. Ram’s experience highlights the importance of investors keeping mum about their crypto holdings.
While offline crypto thefts are rare, online attacks have remained on the rise. Recently, decentralized finance protocol UwU Lend and omnichain tokenization platform Holograph lost $20 million and $14.4 million, respectively, after attackers exploited vulnerabilities in their smart contracts.