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Crypto investor charged with kidnapping and torturing
- frontfor 1y agoWhen the weakest link between the criminal and the cryptocurrency is a single person (the holder himself in this instance), that person alone would need to withstand all attacks and “rubber hose cryptanalysis”.
- fallinditch 1y agoThe most effective protection is a combination of discretion, strong security practices, and advanced wallet configurations like multisig and passphrase protection. You could store passphrases in a hardware wallet in a bank vault in a small European country.
- fortran77 1y agoThat won’t stop you from being tortured. You need to make sure nobody knows you have cryptocurrency
- lazide 1y agoHard to do when they’re potentially getting info from exchanges.
- thebruce87m 1y ago> You could store passphrases in a hardware wallet in a bank vault in a small European country. A little bit of irony here having to store your crypto related stuff at a bank to keep it safe.
- defrost 1y agoNot all bank vaults are in banks, here's the basement of a prog rock musician and his wife's house (a former bank(?)) .. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CM6iqwcyC1A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CM6iqwcyC1A Physical security for digital credentials is the main point here, that doesn't always imply a regular bank, many modern banks lack the bank vaults of yore in any case. Tangentially, avoid showing up unannounced at grandparents house: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZZmFG07OVs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZZmFG07OVs
- grues-dinner 1y agoAnd in the "socialist" Big Government over-regulated hellscape of Europe no less. I would have thought one of those libertarian seasteads or enclaves would be axiomatically the best place for such things?
- xhkkffbf 1y agoYes, ironic. But, of course, nothing in this attack has anything to do with blockchain or crypto per se. They could have been torturing someone for the password with access to the bank's old school accounts or safe deposit box.
- baxtr 1y ago"Brute force attack"?
- psandor 1y agoOf course there's an XKCD about this: https://xkcd.com/538/ https://xkcd.com/538/
- mediumsmart 1y agoMan Charged with Kidnapping and Torturing Crypto Investor for Weeks considering that the crypto investor was a man and assuming that the man acquired the wallet he was tortured for by investing in crypto.
- gundmc 1y agoThis would have been a much more accurate phrasing.
- greatpostman 1y agoTheres alot of really rich crypto people in nyc that are up to no good.
- nobody9999 1y ago>Man known as 'crypto king of Kentucky' arrested for alleged kidnap, torture of man in New York City Source: https://www.wlwt.com/article/john-woeltz-arrested-for-kidnap-torture-of-man-in-nyc/64872381 https://www.wlwt.com/article/john-woeltz-arrested-for-kidnap...
- bpodgursky 1y agoThis is said to happen in Russia all the time, except the police never intervene and the bodies are just incinerated once the keys are tortured out.
- add-sub-mul-div 1y agoTechnology isn't even a cool field anymore, the major innovations (crypto, blockchain, AI) have such a film of sliminess around them. You have to ignore or be ignorant of the fact that they're going to be used for scams and bullshit more than for good.
- stephenr 1y ago> the major innovations You mean the overhyped extremely niche technologies?
- nailer 1y agoThe idea that a technology that challenges Google search, and digital money are ‘niche’ is… odd.
- lern_too_spel 1y agoAI is not niche. Blockchain ledgers are because centralized ledgers are cheaper, faster, and controllable by law; which is what most people want if they spend a few seconds thinking about it.
- nailer 1y agoThis is the typical HN 2015 crypto knowledge. It was accurate a decade ago but isn’t any more. - Centralised ledgers are multiple orders of magnitude more expensive (2.5% to 6%, a typical blue and white square checkout is 3.5%) versus something like $0.000025 on the most active blockchain) - At their best (2-3 second confirmation) as fast as current gen blockchain networks and an order of magnitude slower than next generation (150 milliseconds block time so expected subsecond confirmations). - Tokens have techniques like permanent delegate for OFAC compliance. This isn’t meant to be a personal attack, it’s just that this view of crypto is akin to saying that ‘AI is customer service chatbots that don’t work’ - correct ten years ago but not anymore. Axiom, YC W25 is the fastest growing company in YC history hitting 100 million in revenue in five months.
- smckk 1y agoStay safe out there. Personal and physical security for founders, operators, and investors [0] https://a16zcrypto.com/posts/article/personal-physical-security/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter https://a16zcrypto.com/posts/article/personal-physical-secur...
- CyberMacGyver 1y agoPretty rich coming from a16z, someone who famously rug pulled Solana investors. Maybe there should be a version for investors to stay safe from a16z also
- nailer 1y agoWhat’s the back story behind this?
- rwmj 1y agoThere was an article in the Atlantic about this (https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/05/extreme-personal-data-privacy-protection/682867/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/05/extreme-pe...) mentioning crypto founders and whales who go to quite extraordinary lengths to keep their home addresses and other information private.
- nikkwong 1y agoHad Satoshi known the impact his innovation would have had on the world, all said and done, I bet he would have chosen to keep it under covers.
- superkuh 1y agoPeople have been kidnapping other people to force them to give up their valuables for millennia. It's far from a new or unique thing in this context.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- anonymousiam 1y agoTrue, but crypto is easier to launder. I feel safer with my money at a brokerage or a bank.
- lazide 1y agoNormal banks can also recall transactions.
- DennisP 1y agoTo some extent. Wire fraud happens pretty often, and after a day or so the money's usually unrecoverable after going through several foreign countries. Home real estate and B2B transactions have been particular targets.
- baby 1y agoYou can leave your crypto at a bank
- nikkwong 1y agoThis comment must be parody. Certainly you can't be serious. In the off chance hat you are, obviously, I must state. Crimes happen as a result of incentive structures. If there were a huge aftermarket for stolen iPhones, iPhone thefts would increase (something that Apple obviously realizes and combats). Because of crypto, the incentive to kidnap people with crypto wealth has surfaced as a real problem. These are kidnappings that, obviously, wouldn't exist if the crypto hadn't existed at all. My larger point is; although crypto has made some people quite wealthy, it's mostly disenfranchised a larger part of the broader society. It's essentially been a wealth transfer from stupid people to opportunistic people. Has wealth been created? I'd argue that although some has been generated, it's a pittance in comparison to the amount of press crypto gets, and the amount of wealth that has been unfairly distributed from the stupid to the opportunistic.
- cperciva 1y agoThis is part of why I designed Tarsnap to keep data as secure as possible, even from me. If someone stores their crypto keys -- or world domination^W optimization plans -- on Tarsnap, I don't want to get kidnapped and tortured by anyone trying to steal that data.
- chistev 1y agoWho can access it?
- ta988 1y agothe person who uploaded it only (or whomever they shared keys with)
- lazide 1y agoOkay, so kidnap them, right?
- ta988 1y agoyes and? you get the data of only one tarsnap user. The comment you were responding to was from the tarsnap creator where he was saying he doesn't have access to those keys so cannot be coerced to give them (and thus has no way to decrypt the data of all the clients).
- lazide 1y agoAnd the point is, the main creator isn’t the target in any of these situations anyway. The end user is. So what’s the point of the statement?
- brazzy 1y agoYou really think the kind of people who do such things will read your website and just give up? "Aw shucks, he's using e2e encryption, no point trying anything"?
- canucker2016 1y agoNYC catching up to Paris - https://arstechnica.com/security/2025/05/we-have-reached-the-severed-fingers-and-abductions-stage-of-the-crypto-revolution/ https://arstechnica.com/security/2025/05/we-have-reached-the...
- carimura 1y agohttps://archive.is/JiYYY https://archive.is/JiYYY
- strathmeyer 1y agoGreat job score one for crypto holders who plan on not revealing their key under torture.
- brunoqc 1y agohttps://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/murder-old-montreal-cryptocurrency-1.7302375 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/murder-old-montreal-...
- private_island 1y agoBring back the penny. A bag of them can be used to stop an attacker.
- blooalien 1y ago> Bring back the penny. A bag of them can be used to stop an attacker. You'll just have to use a sock fulla nickels now I guess ... :shrug:
- 0x38B 1y agoThe most telling or disturbing thing I learned from a recent article posted here about the Crypto-related kidnappings was how criminals found some of their victims’ addresses and personal information in marketing data that companies kept on their customers.
- mcintyre1994 1y agoThe recent Coinbase leak is mostly stored KYC data AFAIK, so even if the company isn’t using it for marketing, they’re probably being forced to store data that they’re not responsible enough to protect.
- lazide 1y agoYup - KYC is of course going to have identifying info on customers.
- web3aj 1y agoThis story is unreal.
- ChrisArchitect 1y agoEarlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44084352 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44084352
- echan00 1y agoIf the title read 'human charged with kidnapping a d torturing a man' instead does that mean all humans are bad? I fail to see the linkage here
- tux3 1y agoThe whole point of the kidnapping and torture was to steal bit coin cryptocurrency. Of course it's material to the story. It'd be conpletely artificial to pretend otherwise.
- Aeolun 1y ago> Inside the home, the police found Polaroid pictures showing the man bound and being assaulted Because of course. These people live in a world where nothing can touch them, least of all the law, so why wouldn’t you literally make your own evidence of your crime and leave it lying around.
- fragmede 1y agoTo send to the man's employer/friends/family for ransom if the crypto thing didn't work out?
- Aeolun 1y agoIf you are already paying rent on a $30k/m apartment, does it really have to?
- fortran77 1y agoI wonder how much of the Impossible Project's (Now Polaroid B.V.) sales are from crypto-kidnappers!? https://www.polaroid.com/en_us/film https://www.polaroid.com/en_us/film
- lrvick 1y agoAs someone who has worked for and/or audited most major crypto custody companies, I am sad to report every single one takes shortcuts that give single individuals acting alone the power to move billions of dollars in value. They also never review third party dependencies. They blindly merge any code dependabot tells them to merge from internet randos and give it control of the funds. This level of negligence should be illegal, but it isn't. Negligence is the default in crypto custody. There are no useful security regulations in this space. Even the ones that think they have a good split custody solution or claim to use HSMs always let an IT manager have remote access to all workstations involved or a release engineer build the software that is used shifting the centralized power and risk to them. Kidnappings and torture are becoming common as people realize this https://github.com/jlopp/physical-bitcoin-attacks https://github.com/jlopp/physical-bitcoin-attacks If you directly or indirectly control secret keys of any significant financial value on your own, you are endangering yourself and your family. Even if you only maintain an open source library used by crypto custodians that do not review the code you write, someone has good reason to coerce you into sneaking in malicious code. To engineers working at custodians: Make your employers manage keys with a quorum of geographically distributed individuals with HSMs, immutable time delayed access controls, and a software supply chain that is full source bootstrapped, reviewed, compiled deterministically, and signed by multiple people so no single person can manipulate the flow. My team and I open sourced a lot of tooling to do this safely. Please use it, or use it for reference to ensure your internal tooling meets the same bar. https://trove.distrust.co https://trove.distrust.co
- franktankbank 1y agoBut don't you see, dear kidnapper, you've made such folly for my systems do not allow me any access to grant your one desire. I'm worthless to you! In fact I'm only a liability now!
- aerostable_slug 1y agoPublicizing the existence of one's countermeasures is an interesting problem. You'd want a believable way to communicate the fact that torturing/extorting the principle buys the opposition nothing (believable being the key part). It would have to become common knowledge in the criminal underworld to have real utility.
- rsynnott 1y ago> Inside the home, the police found Polaroid pictures showing the man bound and being assaulted, the law enforcement official said. ... Why on earth would you document this? > Two butlers who worked at the home were also present and agreed on Friday to be interviewed by the police, the official said. ... Why on earth would you do this in a place where you weren't the only person present?! (Also, butlers, wtf?) I suppose, much like the crypto people are slowly rediscovering why the modern financial system is as it is, maybe they're also figuring out how to do crimes by trial and error.
- dang 1y agoRelated ongoing thread: Wrench Attacks: Physical attacks targeting cryptocurrency users (2024) [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44087183 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44087183 - May 2025 (50 comments)
- emilycole0 1y ago[flagged]
- baby 1y agoThis is so crazy, this happened not far from my place and we saw a lot of cops around, even crazier some people broke into my building 3 days after the kidnapping looking for a "john", even crazieeeer I had coffee with this john (the kidnapper) in 2019 in SF. He seemed a bit odd but overall nice, kind of like a blackhat that had found a job on the other side (he was doing security for a crypto project called grin). Most likely this is not your typical kidnapping, I would bet that they knew each other and that there's something else at play. Also the apartment he was staying at is $75k/month rent, that's insane...
- tre7 1y ago[dead]