“Wrench Attack” commits violence against the trial of certain cryptocurrency holders, kidnapping
In two cases in the United States, police claimed in two cases in France that brutal attacks were tied to cryptocurrency-related crimes that have emanated from behind computer screens and entered the real world as unregulated currencies surged.
The so-called robbery falls into the category commonly described as “wrench attacks.” This is a name popularized by online comics that teases someone through a wrench until they give up their passwords, which can easily undo high-tech security.
Phil Ariss of cryptocurrency tracking company TRM Labs said in a recent blog post that part of the wrench attack is attributed to cryptocurrencies entering mainstream finance.
TRM said violence may be increasing for a number of reasons, including criminals who think they can get rid of crypto theft because transactions are difficult to track and are often covered up anonymously, TRM said.
“As long as there is a viable cleaning path or liquidation of stolen assets, whether the target is a high-value watch or a crypto wallet, it will not have any impact on criminals,” Aris said. “Cryptocurrencies are now firmly mainstream, so our traditional understanding of physical threats and robbery needs to develop accordingly.”
In Canada, the CEO of a Toronto cryptocurrency company briefly held a ransom late last year, while Montreal police are investigating the homicide of cryptocurrency influencers last year. In both cases, the police are firmly driven by the details or possible motivations of the crime.
Here are some of the most highly anticipated international cases recently:
Manhattan townhouse in prison
In the New York case, two U.S. cryptocurrency investors – John Woeltz and William Dupleseie – have been arrested in recent days when a 28-year-old Italian man told police that they tortured his Bitcoin password. Both lawyers declined to comment.
Authorities say Duplessie and Woeltz lured victims to an eight-bedroom townhouse in Manhattan's Soho district, one of the city's most expensive neighborhoods, on May 6.
Over the next 17 days, the man told police that he was bound by his wrist, shocked with wires, hit by a pistol, cut his legs with a saw and was forced to smoke from the cracked tube. He said at one time, he hung from the top stairs of the house.
The victim believes he will be killed soon and said he agreed to get the people to access the password Friday morning.
But when the men went to retrieve his computer, the victim was able to escape from his home and run a traffic agent outside the street.
Prosecutors said there was a lot of evidence for the search for townhouses.
Authorities said the victim had a wrist injury, with wrist injuries that were bound, face cuts and other injured.
Both Duplessie and Woeltz seem to be entrepreneurs focusing on cryptocurrencies. In the online profile, Duplessie is listed as the co-founder and procurement director of the Pangea blockchain fund and an investor in other blockchain-based companies. An email seeking comments has been sent to Pangea.
Woeltz described himself as a blockchain investor in the interview, who spent some time in Silicon Valley before participating in Kentucky’s rapidly growing cryptocurrency industry.
Lamborghini hijacked in Connecticut
While the allegations are still emerging, 13 people in Washington, D.C. were charged earlier this year with accused of combining computer hacking and money laundering with old-fashioned counterfeiting and theft to steal more than $260 million in the U.S. from victims’ cryptocurrency accounts.
Some have been accused of hacking websites and servers to steal cryptocurrency databases and identifying targets, but others have allegedly broken into victims’ homes to steal their “hardware wallets,” devices that provide access to cryptocurrency accounts.
Ottawa police say it may disappear once the money is invested in fraudulent cryptocurrency sites.
The case stems from an investigation that began in a couple in Danbury, Connecticut, forced to quit their Lamborghini SUV, attacked and tied to the back of a van. According to a long-term feature in The New York Times magazine, a FBI agent who was off duty happened to be in the area and helped police track the movement of the suspect's vehicle.
Authorities claim the incident was a ransom plot against the couple's son, who said they stole more than $240 million worth of U.S. bitcoin from a victim.
The son was not charged but was detained on an unspecified “federal misdemeanor” charge, according to online jail records. Police stopped carjacking and arrested six men.
The incident occurred in France
Meanwhile, in France, the industry was shocked by kidnappings by wealthy cryptocurrency holders and their relatives in ransom plots.
Prosecutors said the attackers recently kidnapped the father of a crypto entrepreneur who kidnapped his dog while walking the dog and sent a video to his son, including one that showed that the father's finger was cut off as they demanded a ransom of millions of euros. Police released their father and arrested several suspects.
Earlier this year, the man in the mask tried to drag the daughter of Pierre Noizat, the CEO and founder of Bitcoin exchange platform Paymium, into a van, but was foiled by the shopkeeper of the cutlery. Noizat told French TV network that his son-in-law needed stitches due to the attack, and he begged the authorities to do more to prevent targeted attacks.
In January, French cryptocurrency company David Balland and his wife's co-founder were also kidnapped for being kidnapped at their home in the Cher region in central France. They were also rescued by police and 10 people were arrested.
French Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau recently said it would strengthen security to crypto entrepreneurs and their families and provide security briefings from elite police departments, prioritizing access to emergency services and police inspections of their homes.
