This is starting to look like a recurring theme. A similar incident happened this summer in Estonia [0], kidnappers from abroad travelled to Tallinn for the express purpose of kidnapping the owner of a crypto casino who resides there. Like it or not, information about wealth is starting to look like a serious safety concern, especially in crypto where retrieving the funds later is practically impossible.
> It sounds more like being involved in crypto than being publicly wealthy
Maybe for now. The cryptocurrenty ricb are lower hanging fruit for sure, but crypto also make other kinds of kidnapping easier so I doubt it will remain soley in that realm.
1. Handle in large quantities. The ransom paid here was $1 million. With crypto, transferring that much is a few keystrokes. With cash, it's basically a large bag of cash that needs to be moved around.
2. Hold for ransom. Given point #1, kidnappers (of people and data) know that it's much easier to demand payment of large amounts in crypto than cash. If you kidnap a rich person in the crypto world, kidnappers know it's easy for him to sign over a very large amount of bitcoin quickly, which looks to be what happened here. Even for a very wealthy person, it's not logistically easy to get a million dollars in cash, never mind hand it over in a way that isn't a huge risk for the kidnappers.
3. Launder. Crypto tumblers are still a thing despite US government crackdown. Laundering cash with recorded serial numbers is much harder.
I'm not denying that crypto may have some legitimate uses, but it's basically a dream come true for criminals.
Your comment that it is logistically easy for the random rich guy to buy large sum of crypto is simply not true. For one, you'd have to go through KYC which takes time, and you can't just open an account and buy 100k in crypto (yet alone millions) as you'd need a history of activity on your account and multiple limit increases.
Not that many people keep a big stack of physical cash under their pillow, and organisations that do keep cash are well-known robbery targets (e.g. banks, mints).
It's substantially harder to kidnap someone and force them to sell their business and then give the cash to you than it is to make them transfer their crypto. And realistically most people's wealth will be in a company or some shares, etc.
I buy, restore, and sell woodworking and metalworking tools and vehicles. If I did it full time I could have that much on hand. I think I have like 25k in case a really good deal pops up, and it's a very side gig.
In which case you really shouldn't tell a public forum about it.
Maybe it's my jaded European mindset, but - rich people have been a target since the dawn of civilization, flaunting wealth is a good way to attract attention from bad people.
> It sounds more like being involved in crypto than being publicly wealthy is a security concern. Which is unsurprising.
In Munich we have a serious problem with watch-robbers snatching people's expensive watches while driving on a motorcycle. Utterly insane but also utterly profitable if you have channels where to sell stolen watches.
I looked it up, these are like $100k->$500k watches being stolen.
How often is that actually happening?
Also, this seems like it could easily be an insurance scam. It seems just a little insane for someone to be casually walking around with a half million dollar watch on their wrist and some thief just happens to know "Hey, that looks like a half million dollar watch!"
Rich people exist. If you think spending a million bucks on a watch makes someone an idiot, you have failed to internalize how rich a large number of rich people actually are.
Nevertheless it's one of the weirdest, most niche ways possible to flex wealth. Only true watch aficionados will be able to spot just how much money you had spent on that watch, but everyone can see how much the car you ride, your villa or private jet is worth.
Often enough. One gang alone took 18 raids in about two years, making about 1.5 million euros [1] - it's about once a month the police actually bother to make a report. Even if one assumes they can get only half the price due to no heritage, 750k for 12 people tax-free, that's more than even experienced developers can net in a year.
> It seems just a little insane for someone to be casually walking around with a half million dollar watch on their wrist and some thief just happens to know "Hey, that looks like a half million dollar watch!"
That's the thing. Munich has a ton of luxury shops for obscenely rich tourists, a good scout is all it needs. Quite some victims actually didn't have insurance.
I mean if you can move that watch in a way that doesn't get you caught for 1/4 of it's retail price, twice a year, that's a decent salary. Doesn't need to happen all that much.
Right, but that requires there to be an identifiable and large enough population of people wandering around with such watches on their wrists.
I guess what I'm saying is I can understand a lot better how the "kia boyz" thing happened. There are a lot of easily identifiable kias everywhere. But luxury watches just seems so niche that it's hard to think someone stealing them would be a crime wave.
> But luxury watches just seems so niche that it's hard to think someone stealing them would be a crime wave.
Well, you won't see that happening in a small village. Not enough people wearing expensive watches there. But in large cities with a huge amount of both domestic and foreign rich people it's bound to develop.
As long as you have a good spotter able to determine if someone is wearing a watch worth barely a few hundred dollars (or less, knockoffs are a thing) or a legit 50k upwards luxury watch, it's one of the more profitable ways of criming: no weapons or drugs involved which tends to yield much harder sentencing in most jurisdictions, less chance of bystanders intervening like in a conventional robbery (most people don't even realize what has happened until they see the motorcycle speeding away), less chance of the victim fighting back or attracting help, almost no chance of getting caught on camera, and the stolen goods are innocuous to carry around - unlike with guns or drugs, if you get in a traffic control or whatnot, the chance that the cop will ask about the watch you're wearing is almost zero because your average cop has zero idea if you're wearing a 5000 dollars Rolex or a 50k dollars Rolex.
I'm not buying it. There are regulated and under/non-regulated financial institutions. Coinbase is regulated. Eastern European casino/crypto is under/non-regulated. Under/non-regulated financial institutions attract fraud and crime like software developers to an online news aggregate.
Not long ago the father of Luis Diaz, a famous Colombian soccer player that plays for Liverpool was kidnapped for ransom money by a armed group in Colombia, the official declaration is that he was returned without paying the ransom -but people highly doubt that to be true-, anyone whose wealth is public knowledge is at risk, specially in countries with organized crime. As you may guess his father and other close relatives no longer reside in Colombia.
While it's very hip to make fun of crypto bros, this isn't unique to crypto. You can easily approximate the net wealth of any company owner in the EU for example, since business registries are open (who owns how much of what company) as well as yearly financial statements (how much are the company's assets worth in a fiscal year). This isn't unique to the EU, it's simply the market I'm personally more familiar with, but I hope you see my point.
What makes crypto unique in this setting is that it's easy for the kidnappers to receive ransom in a way that's very hard to trace back to them after the fact.
It's not just about receiving the ransom, but how easy it can be to access the original funds.
The story of, say, someone successfully kidnapping Bezos in a lightning operation and trying to take a good bite of his wealth is quite different than the same if you kidnapped Satoshi while he has access to his keys. It's not even in the tracing, but how much you can take away successfully, and how fast.
It's about ransom, not about keys. Fortune 500 company CEOs and such have a special insurance for the cases like this. There is an old movie Proof of Life about the topic.
While being held captive and done in a way that doesn't give away the location of the kidnappers? The larger the loan Bezos takes, the harder that will be.
The extremely wealthy like Bezos have contingency plans and systems for this situation.
> easy for the kidnappers to receive ransom in a way that's very hard to trace back to them after the fact
This is actually less true than you assume (barring Monero). Crypto, and Bitcoin especially, is less (less, though not yet completely) of a Wild West due to Western nations enforcing KYC laws. Through this, addresses can be traced back to real people. Further chain analysis (Chainalysis is the name I'm most familiar with) allows investigators to follow the money through an immutible chain stretching back to 2008.
In short, Bitcoin is not private. It is arguably one of the least private ways to transact, considering the Blockchain will show the history of every wallet, and where every Sat started and ended. Unless you take enormous precautions, it can be traced back to you.
Whether the feds can get to you is another story, but one as old as time.
Apparently the tax returns in Norway for everyone are public information. I'm surprised this hasn't caused enough problems that we would hear about it in news articles.
Turns out that in a functioning society, it’s not a big deal if someone knows how much money you made last year. Thieves and kidnappers are not lurking around every corner after all.
Money and nudity are still the great taboos for Americans. These national obsessions must be closely guarded or some kind of calamity will consume the sinners who exposed their bodies and bank accounts.
In the US, compensation of top-earners of public companies (and non-profits) is public information in annual reports and, even if it weren't, you can pretty much assume a top exec of a large public company is fairly wealthy.
"Average" people may not share their wealth in general (in part because they may not want friends and family to know they have a lot of money) but it's no secret that the CEO or SVP of a Fortune 500 company has a ton of money.
I think it's less about morals and more about social safety net?
When you're at the bottom in a country that has decent safety nets for you isn't as bad as the US. And once you've done one crime, the rest get easier to justify, I would assume.
> You can easily approximate the net wealth of any company owner in the EU
I don't see how. Unless you're talking about a people who owns a significant percentage of a publicly-traded company, but that's most certainly not "any company owner". Probably less than 1% of the population.
The entries in EU business registries are public for all companies, not just publicly traded companies. You can check who owns how much of what company and you can also check their yearly reports. In most countries this comes at a small fee for the registry extract, but the information is readily available, in some countries it's even free. As an example, here's the Estonian business registry extract for the company Foobar OÜ (I'm not affiliated, I just searched for foobar) [0]. This is not a publicly traded company, yet you can see who owns the company in what fraction and if you download the latest annual report you can also see how much the company is worth.
This information is legally required to be available to prevent money laundering, fraud, other financial crimes, etc.
Business registries are no longer open, as there was a court case in Luxenbourg where one of Putin's fixers lobbied to get his private information closed.
Ultimate Beneficiar Ownership information can be only accessed by authorities.
It's also common for wealthy companies to have KNR (kidnap and ransom) insurance policies for their key people. It's not unlike why some companies have policies where the key people are not allowed to travel together so an incident doesn't take them all out at once.
Just another example of where crypto thinking they are hip/trendy for breaking the norms. Some lessons of bucking the traditional methods are gonna hurt more than others.
Great thread on what it takes to do crypto in Russia :
"In contrast, Russian cryptobros that I know tend to act very, very lowkey. The fewer people know about your activities, the better. Posting about dealing with crypto in social media is absolutely unthinkable. Why? Because that makes you too easy and lucrative prey"
He’s alive and can get better security. Maybe it makes the problem worse for others, but this is a no brainer decision when your safety is on the line.
Why wouldn't you do this? If you know somebody's got a lot of bitcoin, you know everything is going to go perfectly.
You could do a kidnapping like this in a couple hours and make your dinner date. If the victim doesn't wise up and get bodyguards or get out of bitcoin, you could kidnap them two or three times.
I don't want to speculate but I wouldn't be surprised if he planned it all along to run away with customer's money. Not unheard of in the crypto world. Hope he makes it home safe.
The fact that I'm watching comments like the one you're responding to get heavily downvoted, and then all of them suddenly propped back up speaks a lot to HN's hatred towards crypto.
I mean, I get it, there are plenty of reasons to dislike crypto bro's, but immediately suggesting that they kidnapped themselves without any other evidence is insane.
It's not insane to have that possibility come to mind -- but it's unfair to individuals to voice a snap accusation like that.
Why it's not insane to consider that: people know that the cryptocurrency space is full of the unethical, and have seen many rug pulls blamed on theft by some mysterious unknown other party.
But, even if a $1M kidnapping was one of the standard cryptobro scam exits (it's not; it's chump change), you'd want more evidence before you start accusing someone who might actually be a traumatized victim.
Yep. I worked in the space for 3 years and basically became a conspiracy theorist in some sense because of how messed up it is.
It looks as though only scam coins are allowed to succeed in the space and well-intentioned people are forced to become scammers or else they'll become a target of the SEC or some other gov entity. I've had some REALLY f*ed up interactions with major figures which are almost impossible to explain otherwise. Also in terms of funding, you will see government entities funding projects that are obvious scams over and over. These are not government entities from 'banana republics' BTW, these are western governments. It's not just the founders themselves who are corrupt, it's literally the government apparatus around it.
When you have various government entities actively supporting fraud, it creates an environment which is worse than lawlessness. Being an honest person in the space is untenable; you just wouldn't last.
It's not like that. I worked with some pioneers in the space who collected millions from the very early days and were within their rights to use those funds as they saw fit but they were coerced/forced into creating non-profit entities to hold the funds (the fact that they were forced was common knowledge at the time it happened) and then they started pouring money down the drain, actively preventing development of the tech and slandering/defaming anyone who tried to improve things. It culminated in them essentially redirecting all raised development funds towards their biggest competitor! This is all public info BTW and could easily be proved in court... Great, if you aren't worried about 'hidden' ramifications! Anyway, all this was done with the explicit approval of government entities. I saw all this happen in real time.
Also, one telltale sign is that they were allowed to get away with stuff which I later learned would have been in violation of regulations. This was a very high profile project that reached 3 billion+ market cap. It didn't fall under the radar. The government knew the whole time and was involved in all decisions.
I also saw some scam projects receive repeat funding from EU government entities in spite of having failed to deliver anything. Then they raised more funds for later projects.
> but immediately suggesting that they kidnapped themselves without any other evidence is insane.
Insane, or a famous form of security fraud that is mitigated by centralized banking systems and therefore highly attractive for crypto-owners.
It's a heads-I-win tails-you-lose situation. They were either kidnapped because the attackers knew there was nothing the CEO could do to defend himself, or he kidnapped himself knowing it was plausibly deniable and couldn't be tracked through traditional means. In either case it's reasonable to examine the extenuating circumstances and wonder why cryptocurrency is such a large target for crime.
It's kind of like wondering if a bloody deer by the side of the road got hit by a car. Like you don't have any evidence that it was hit by a car, it could just as easily have been hit by a boat, or a low flying airplane.
[0] https://news.err.ee/1609499827/attempted-abduction-of-austra...
It's almost like the crypto markets attract criminals!
Maybe for now. The cryptocurrenty ricb are lower hanging fruit for sure, but crypto also make other kinds of kidnapping easier so I doubt it will remain soley in that realm.
1. Handle in large quantities. The ransom paid here was $1 million. With crypto, transferring that much is a few keystrokes. With cash, it's basically a large bag of cash that needs to be moved around.
2. Hold for ransom. Given point #1, kidnappers (of people and data) know that it's much easier to demand payment of large amounts in crypto than cash. If you kidnap a rich person in the crypto world, kidnappers know it's easy for him to sign over a very large amount of bitcoin quickly, which looks to be what happened here. Even for a very wealthy person, it's not logistically easy to get a million dollars in cash, never mind hand it over in a way that isn't a huge risk for the kidnappers.
3. Launder. Crypto tumblers are still a thing despite US government crackdown. Laundering cash with recorded serial numbers is much harder.
I'm not denying that crypto may have some legitimate uses, but it's basically a dream come true for criminals.
On the other hand, if your business was a scam and you needed to explain where $1 million went to...
that's why people don't do that very often, or if they do they walk around with armed guards until they aren't holding that cash anymore.
It's substantially harder to kidnap someone and force them to sell their business and then give the cash to you than it is to make them transfer their crypto. And realistically most people's wealth will be in a company or some shares, etc.
Die Hard inspired too many?
All of the answers I can think of are criminal.
Maybe it's my jaded European mindset, but - rich people have been a target since the dawn of civilization, flaunting wealth is a good way to attract attention from bad people.
In Munich we have a serious problem with watch-robbers snatching people's expensive watches while driving on a motorcycle. Utterly insane but also utterly profitable if you have channels where to sell stolen watches.
How often is that actually happening?
Also, this seems like it could easily be an insurance scam. It seems just a little insane for someone to be casually walking around with a half million dollar watch on their wrist and some thief just happens to know "Hey, that looks like a half million dollar watch!"
These folks expect to be able to resell the object later.
He has apparently at least a 40k+ watch. [1]
[1] https://www.scmp.com/magazines/style/luxury/article/3215841/...
Often enough. One gang alone took 18 raids in about two years, making about 1.5 million euros [1] - it's about once a month the police actually bother to make a report. Even if one assumes they can get only half the price due to no heritage, 750k for 12 people tax-free, that's more than even experienced developers can net in a year.
> It seems just a little insane for someone to be casually walking around with a half million dollar watch on their wrist and some thief just happens to know "Hey, that looks like a half million dollar watch!"
That's the thing. Munich has a ton of luxury shops for obscenely rich tourists, a good scout is all it needs. Quite some victims actually didn't have insurance.
[1] https://www.br.de/nachrichten/bayern/banden-reissen-in-muenc...
I mean if you can move that watch in a way that doesn't get you caught for 1/4 of it's retail price, twice a year, that's a decent salary. Doesn't need to happen all that much.
I guess what I'm saying is I can understand a lot better how the "kia boyz" thing happened. There are a lot of easily identifiable kias everywhere. But luxury watches just seems so niche that it's hard to think someone stealing them would be a crime wave.
Well, you won't see that happening in a small village. Not enough people wearing expensive watches there. But in large cities with a huge amount of both domestic and foreign rich people it's bound to develop.
As long as you have a good spotter able to determine if someone is wearing a watch worth barely a few hundred dollars (or less, knockoffs are a thing) or a legit 50k upwards luxury watch, it's one of the more profitable ways of criming: no weapons or drugs involved which tends to yield much harder sentencing in most jurisdictions, less chance of bystanders intervening like in a conventional robbery (most people don't even realize what has happened until they see the motorcycle speeding away), less chance of the victim fighting back or attracting help, almost no chance of getting caught on camera, and the stolen goods are innocuous to carry around - unlike with guns or drugs, if you get in a traffic control or whatnot, the chance that the cop will ask about the watch you're wearing is almost zero because your average cop has zero idea if you're wearing a 5000 dollars Rolex or a 50k dollars Rolex.
> He says Skurka's abduction is the 171st instance of suspects using physical violence to steal bitcoins, that he's aware of.
Just knowing he's CEO of a crypto company means he probably has a lot of crypto.
Yes it is tied to you, when you spend it.
What makes crypto unique in this setting is that it's easy for the kidnappers to receive ransom in a way that's very hard to trace back to them after the fact.
The story of, say, someone successfully kidnapping Bezos in a lightning operation and trying to take a good bite of his wealth is quite different than the same if you kidnapped Satoshi while he has access to his keys. It's not even in the tracing, but how much you can take away successfully, and how fast.
The extremely wealthy like Bezos have contingency plans and systems for this situation.
This is actually less true than you assume (barring Monero). Crypto, and Bitcoin especially, is less (less, though not yet completely) of a Wild West due to Western nations enforcing KYC laws. Through this, addresses can be traced back to real people. Further chain analysis (Chainalysis is the name I'm most familiar with) allows investigators to follow the money through an immutible chain stretching back to 2008.
In short, Bitcoin is not private. It is arguably one of the least private ways to transact, considering the Blockchain will show the history of every wallet, and where every Sat started and ended. Unless you take enormous precautions, it can be traced back to you.
Whether the feds can get to you is another story, but one as old as time.
Turns out that in a functioning society, it’s not a big deal if someone knows how much money you made last year. Thieves and kidnappers are not lurking around every corner after all.
Money and nudity are still the great taboos for Americans. These national obsessions must be closely guarded or some kind of calamity will consume the sinners who exposed their bodies and bank accounts.
"Average" people may not share their wealth in general (in part because they may not want friends and family to know they have a lot of money) but it's no secret that the CEO or SVP of a Fortune 500 company has a ton of money.
When you're at the bottom in a country that has decent safety nets for you isn't as bad as the US. And once you've done one crime, the rest get easier to justify, I would assume.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Hagen_(businessman)
I don't see how. Unless you're talking about a people who owns a significant percentage of a publicly-traded company, but that's most certainly not "any company owner". Probably less than 1% of the population.
This information is legally required to be available to prevent money laundering, fraud, other financial crimes, etc.
[0] https://ariregister.rik.ee/eng/company/12199449/Foobar-O%C3%...
Ultimate Beneficiar Ownership information can be only accessed by authorities.
e.g. ‘ Toyota Baltic Aktsiaselts (10234087)’ lists 1 senior manager under ‘Beneficial owners’… which is clearly nonsense.
He probably doesn’t even own 50% of the intermediary company registered in Estonia… let alone 100%.
Edit: And ‘SIA Toyota Material Handling Baltic Eesti filiaal (11629379)’ doesn’t list anyone at all in that section.
Just another example of where crypto thinking they are hip/trendy for breaking the norms. Some lessons of bucking the traditional methods are gonna hurt more than others.
Would the kidnapping have been less likely to happen at all, if the random had to be paid in physical currency (e.g., paper bills, gold)?
"In contrast, Russian cryptobros that I know tend to act very, very lowkey. The fewer people know about your activities, the better. Posting about dealing with crypto in social media is absolutely unthinkable. Why? Because that makes you too easy and lucrative prey"
https://x.com/kamilkazani/status/1579145927373508609?lang=en...
You could do a kidnapping like this in a couple hours and make your dinner date. If the victim doesn't wise up and get bodyguards or get out of bitcoin, you could kidnap them two or three times.
I mean, I get it, there are plenty of reasons to dislike crypto bro's, but immediately suggesting that they kidnapped themselves without any other evidence is insane.
Why it's not insane to consider that: people know that the cryptocurrency space is full of the unethical, and have seen many rug pulls blamed on theft by some mysterious unknown other party.
But, even if a $1M kidnapping was one of the standard cryptobro scam exits (it's not; it's chump change), you'd want more evidence before you start accusing someone who might actually be a traumatized victim.
It looks as though only scam coins are allowed to succeed in the space and well-intentioned people are forced to become scammers or else they'll become a target of the SEC or some other gov entity. I've had some REALLY f*ed up interactions with major figures which are almost impossible to explain otherwise. Also in terms of funding, you will see government entities funding projects that are obvious scams over and over. These are not government entities from 'banana republics' BTW, these are western governments. It's not just the founders themselves who are corrupt, it's literally the government apparatus around it.
When you have various government entities actively supporting fraud, it creates an environment which is worse than lawlessness. Being an honest person in the space is untenable; you just wouldn't last.
“Look what you made me do. You left me no choice but to hurt you.”
Also, one telltale sign is that they were allowed to get away with stuff which I later learned would have been in violation of regulations. This was a very high profile project that reached 3 billion+ market cap. It didn't fall under the radar. The government knew the whole time and was involved in all decisions.
I also saw some scam projects receive repeat funding from EU government entities in spite of having failed to deliver anything. Then they raised more funds for later projects.
Insane, or a famous form of security fraud that is mitigated by centralized banking systems and therefore highly attractive for crypto-owners.
It's a heads-I-win tails-you-lose situation. They were either kidnapped because the attackers knew there was nothing the CEO could do to defend himself, or he kidnapped himself knowing it was plausibly deniable and couldn't be tracked through traditional means. In either case it's reasonable to examine the extenuating circumstances and wonder why cryptocurrency is such a large target for crime.
I’m pretty sure it’s the former.
Much like if the same money was used for medical procedures that aren't covered by the health-plan.
> He was released after a ransom of $1 million was paid electronically, a source close to the investigation said.