A man posing as a delivery driver robbed a San Francisco homeowner of $11 million in cryptocurrency on Saturday morning after pulling a gun and binding the victim with duct tape.
The suspects entered under the guise of making deliveries, brandished weapons, detained homeowners, and forced them to hand over their crypto assets. wallet Police also had identification documents with them, as well as a laptop and a phone, according to a report reviewed by the police. san francisco chronicle.
The attack occurred around 6:45 a.m. at a home near 18th Street and Dolores Avenue in the Mission Dolores neighborhood, according to the report.
The incident is the latest in an alarming spike in “wrench attacks,” physical assaults targeting crypto holders, with security researchers warning that such crimes are reaching new levels this year.
The report did not provide details of any injuries or arrests, the report said. SF Chronicle.
San Francisco police did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the department. decryption.
Physical threats are on the rise
Cybercrime consultant David Sehyun Baek said: decryption Investigators said they were likely to “work on all three areas at the same time: device, blockchain, and victim profiling, rather than choosing one over the other.”
“The first 24 to 72 hours will be a tough hardware effort,” Baek explained, noting that authorities will likely be tracking stolen phones and laptops while trying to secure any remaining assets on exchanges before the attackers move them.
“In parallel, we will also try to identify the exact wallets and addresses involved so that blockchain experts can begin tracking the leak in real time,” he added.
He noted that while forced transfers allow attackers to move cryptocurrencies “within minutes,” especially when routed through privacy-focused services, digital-only thefts are likely to be flagged and frozen by exchanges.
Jameson Ropp, co-founder and chief security officer of self-custody platform Casa, which maintains a database that tracks such incidents, has recorded more than 60 wrench attacks this year, roughly double the number recorded last year.
Recently, Russian crypto promoter Roman Novak and his wife were murdered in the UAE after meeting with men posing as investors who requested access to his crypto wallet.
On Sunday, Thai police arrested a Korean man and three Thai nationals on suspicion of kidnapping a Chinese victim and stealing more than $10,000 in cash and virtual currency, local media reported.
“The hard truth is that identifying a suspect is much more achievable than recovering stolen cryptocurrencies,” Baek said.
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