Ethereum
This Crypto Investor Lost Nearly $4 Million in Ethereum (ETH) to Armed Thieves
A London-based cryptocurrency investor lost almost all of his digital asset investments to armed robbers following a physical attack at his home.
An X job by the victim, under a pseudonym named Ram, revealed that the three thieves were armed with machetes and forced him to transfer all his cryptos to certain accounts.
Investor loses $4 million in crypto to thieves
According to Ram, the thieves knew his residence and knew he held crypto. When he arrived 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 he wasn’t stabbed.
“This just happened – 3 guys physically robbed my home. They were armed with machetes. They knew I had crypto and knew where I lived…I’m still in shock. This is one of the worst experiences of my life,” the crypto investor said.
Etherscan data shows transactions moved 1,098 ETH from one address and 13 ETH from other. With ETH trade At around $3,400 at the time of writing, the stash is collectively worth over $3.77 million.
Due to the theft, Ram’s wallet addresses now contain less than $63,000 worth of crypto assets, including StakeWise (SWISE), Unibot (UNIBOT), USD Coin (USDC), Staked Aave, and FOX.
Kraken investigates incident
Through his tweet, Ram sought help from on-chain detective 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 payment gateway Bitrefill, calling the exchange’s support team to look into the matter.
In response to James’ tweet, the Kraken support team revealed that they were investigating the situation; therefore, Ram is faced with the possibility of recovering some of his stolen goods. Ram’s experience highlights the importance of investors remaining silent about their cryptocurrency holdings.
Although offline cryptocurrency thefts are rare, online attacks remain on the rise. Recently, a decentralized finance protocol UwU loan and omnichain tokenization platform Holograph lost $20 million and $14.4 million respectively after attackers exploited vulnerabilities in their smart contracts.