On November 26th, news of a home invasion robbery once again shocked the crypto world. Lachy Groom, ex-boyfriend of OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman, was robbed at gunpoint on Saturday night, losing $11 million worth of crypto assets. The suspect, posing as a deliveryman, broke into his home, held him at gunpoint, beat him, bound him with duct tape, emptied his crypto accounts, and stole his phone and computer. Besides this case, there have been frequent reports of robberies targeting crypto assets recently, including:
On November 22, police in St. Petersburg, Russia, arrested a man who broke into the office of a cryptocurrency exchange, detonated two replica grenades, and lit a smoke grenade. He then demanded that staff transfer all of the exchange's cryptocurrency assets to his personal wallet. The attempt failed, and he was arrested.
A Hong Kong man was recently sentenced to seven years in prison in Canada for his involvement in an extremely brutal home invasion robbery: four attackers posing as mail carriers broke into a British Columbia home, subjected a family of three to 13.5 hours of beatings, waterboarding, and sexual assault, and ultimately stole $1.6 million worth of Bitcoin.
On the afternoon of November 4th, two men and three women were attacked while traveling from Oxford to London. The robbers stole watches and the victims' mobile phones, and forced one of them to transfer cryptocurrency from her account. They ultimately stole a watch worth £450,000 and £1.1 million (approximately $1.44 million) in cryptocurrency.
Violent robberies have once again become a focus of attention in the crypto community. Steve Krystek, CEO of personal security company PFC Safeguards, stated that cases of cryptocurrency investors being kidnapped are on the rise. One joke refers to these attacks as "wrench attacks," implying that the effectiveness of crypto technology in protecting personal assets depends on whether a user can withstand a beating with a $5 wrench.
