Austrian police have arrested two Ukrainian nationals on suspicion of the torture and murder of a 21-year-old student. The student’s body was found burnt beyond recognition inside a Mercedes after he was violently assaulted and his cryptocurrency wallet emptied.
local media identified This student is Danilo K., the son of the deputy mayor of Kharkiv, Ukraine. discovered A man was sitting in the back seat of a car after flames and smoke triggered a fire alarm at a nearby apartment complex early on Nov. 26.
vienna police announced It announced Tuesday that the suspects, aged 19 and 45, were arrested in Ukraine on Saturday, three days after fleeing across the border.
The motive behind the crime remains unknown, but the victim’s testimony cryptocurrency wallet Authorities said a greedy motive was likely detected.
Police announced that the suspect would not be extradited as the case was transferred to Ukrainian authorities at their request.
According to local media, the assault allegedly began in the garage of the Sofitel hotel, where the young suspect ambushed his classmates, was then forced into his Mercedes and driven to Donaustadt, where he was beaten so severely that his teeth were broken, left to suffocate, doused with petrol and set on fire in the back seat. report.
Police said in a statement: “An investigation into the fire revealed that gasoline was used to start the fire inside the vehicle.” “Investigators recovered a melted container from the back seat.”
Cryptocurrency “wrench attack”
The Vienna murder comes amid an increase in physical attacks targeting crypto holders. wrench attack.
Jameson Ropp, co-founder and chief security officer of self-custody platform Casa. database Nearly 70 tracking wrench attacks have been recorded this year, with more than 30% occurring in Europe.
Last weekend, a man posing as a delivery driver detained a homeowner in San Francisco and forced him to move. Hand over $11 million in virtual currency.
Earlier this month in Canada, court records detailed a 2024 home invasion in which a family member was tortured as the attacker. Stolen $1.6 million in Bitcoin.
This pattern has been deadly in some areas, as last month’s arrest of Russian crypto promoter Roman Novak and his wife. killed in the united arab emirates After meeting the men who posed as investors and demanded access to his wallet.
“Europe has several converging factors: a relatively dense urban environment, strong cryptocurrency adoption in certain corridors, and highly capable organized crime groups that have already experienced armed robbery, extortion, and kidnapping historically associated with drugs and cash,” Ari Redboard, vice president and global head of policy and government affairs at TRM Labs, told Decrypt.
“Crypto extortion logically fits into their existing toolkit,” he said.
As multisig, hardware wallets, operational security and stronger exchange controls make digital theft harder, “criminals may increasingly rely on coercion rather than hacking,” Redboard noted.
“This does not mean that wrench attacks will not become more common, but as long as cryptocurrencies represent highly liquid and borderless value, physical targets will remain an attractive alternative,” he added.
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