Topic: Manchester court sentences 7 for kidnapping, $124K crypto extortion (Read 154 times)

Good point about sharing some details with family members. This can be a deadly step and more dangerous than telling strangers because family members know more about your daily life than strangers. At worst, the family members you share these details with may be trustworthy, but there is no guarantee that they will not share the news with their friends and it becomes difficult to limit the scope of the information.
In general, it is never advisable to share stories about our private lives including our sources of income and details of our investments. It is not only about crypto but all valuable assets that we can earn through hard work or successful investment. With crypto, the situation is made more dangerous because of the privacy feature that gives criminals an incentive to plan and commit crimes.

Justice has been served and the bad guys are always there trying to see who can they extort. I'm sorry for the man that they have been extorting and maybe that guy was too vocal on them and that's why they have become aware that he holds crypto a lot. The lesson that we can learn from the same scenarios is to be quiet and keep ourselves low profile. Don't be too boastful in social media because we'll get nothing from that, avoid the fuss from chasing clout just because your portfolio is up.

So many abuses everywhere where but sexual abuse is somewhat more rampant these days, crypto crimes such as this have not used to be popular before now and hearing of extortion of funds from victims, the bigger question is how the kidnappers know about their victim's cryptocurrency holdings.


He may have exposed himself somehow by letting others know about his cryptocurrency portfolio and possibly know how much he is worth in coins, anyways thank goodness this one is caught and quite timid for the victim not to have reported the case earlier than now.

The world is full of shit and people no longer feel safe simply because they own Bitcoin or they are considered as crypto traders, I think insecurity and poverty is the reason behind all this things if not I don't see any good reason why people will not be happy to talk about what they do or the kind of investment they are into. How do people get encouraged to invest in cryptocurrency when you don't feel safe to talk to them about it and you being an investor, we all should be careful not to lose our lives because of what we own, the world is crazy.

There have been recent cases of kidnapping, threats, robbery, torture, stalking, and others serious crimes related to crypto. I'm a bit worried such cases will further rise as adoption is also accelerating.

Perhaps the question as to whether individuals are better off leaving their wealth in the custody of banks and other secured storage or they're better off being their own bank will always remain relevant.

There are serious and heavy responsibilities associated with being your own bank. One must be aware of them first before committing to it.

Though have seen where similar thing exist anyway..
"This was about 11 years old girl being molest by her teacher on a regular basis, and yet she can't speak up to her parent since the 27 years old male teacher threatened to have her life if she revealed that to her parent or anyone within or around the school. But luckily someone upstirs had to sight them and took video records of them and reported to the school authorities, that was how the 11 years old girl was saved from the hand of that bastard and the guy was arrested and fired from work". This happened within my State.

Unfortunately, there are those that like bragging about their wealth in cryptocurrency, they are all over social media flaunting their wealth online to impress some ladies, they don't care about their privacy and security and most likely to be the case in the story of the OP, when something like this happens everyone begins to feel pity for the victim but yet when the truth of the matter is made open, you will see that he is also a cause to the experience he had. Why can't people just live without trying to show up about their wealth especially on the internet where a lot of scammers and criminals are roaming about looking for who to harm. People should know that privacy is important, and they should keep their mouth shut about their wealth in cryptocurrency.
         Though the case of the story may not be as a result of flaunting wealth on social media, it can also be an arrangement by people who are close to him and know that he has a huge amount in cryptocurrency. We just need to be careful with everybody because basically, anything concerning your holdings in cryptocurrency is only to be known by you alone, no third party no matter how close you are to them. In anything concerning money generally, you don't need to trust anyone because many people have lost money and valuables trusting someone who they think is trustworthy.

I don't read the news, but from your summary I feel that I can understand generally about the story, and the warning message from you.

Privacy matters!

It is truly super important for everyone, privacy always matters for us.

Many physical attacks in history with many of them have not happy endings for victims.
https://github.com/jlopp/physical-bitcoin-attacks
https://github.com/demining/Physical-Bitcoin-Attacks

You can prevent it, reduce risk if you can defend your privacy better.
Bitcoin privacy resources.
The value of privacy and why privacy matters.

The key here is "Anonymous." Keeping our identity hidden helps protect us while investing or holding crypto. When you flaunt your crypto, scammers might think you're loaded and try to take advantage. It's a relief that, in reports, the victim wasn't killed.

So, to be safe, don't brag about your holdings. Enjoy your gains quietly, or even start a business to explain how you built your wealth.

Privacy is the key to safety and guiding your speech when in public is also very important because before anyone can k own that you own shit in crypto you have to voice it out to them in one way or the other and that is for sure a bad step.


Acting poor and not showing off your wealth to people like; showing your new iPhone or sports cars, engaging in irresponsible unions and also being friendly can easily land someone into such trouble, the guy has gone through a lot at the hands of those gangster before help finally come for him.

yet another reason to keep your wealth hidden and not show or brag to the internet or even to people close to you, anonymity is securty. glad the person got recued but I am certain he is still suffering mentally.

my guess is because it is easier to move and if the victim sent you the crypto you can send it to different wallets so it is harder to track and withdraw it before the victim can file a report.

We know that there are similar incidents before and I can only say the same thing to people who aren't taking their privacy seriously. People should take their privacy seriously to avoid something dangerous from happening like this one. As others have said, keep the shit to yourself by not flaunting what you have or what you earn. Well, we really can't help people bragging to anyone that they earn lots of money or something like that which will become victims. Even those people who aren't bragging are robbed means that if a person is flaunting then it will only make that person a target.

This tells us that even the scammers and hoodlums also have passion for privacy and would love to do a clean job without leaving any footprint for them to be traced, its a pity that they got to know about the guy that he is into crypto and also have it in his portfolio, though this was a bad act for them to threat him upon what belongs to him, but i also want to believe maybe he is very young not to have known the right thing to do by reporting them for such abuse on him, he is just lucky enough to have been seen by another person who later reported those gangsters to the police, for some of us who like flaunting our asset to the public and making fame out of it, then this should be a lesson to us for a change henceforth.

What a very bad spot to find oneself. I know he must have been threatened not to report to the police, so he had no other option than to keep mute and be suffering.

The article didn't say he did something that attracted attention. It only said a gang member stormed the victim's home and threatened him to send crypto, which he did. So it's more like a mind game, and the gang member didn't really know he had crypto. And his first crypto transfer brought about the unpleasant events that befell him.

In as much as is an awful thing that happen to the guy but his action towards it from the beginning is very bad because he didn't realize the danger he was facing, from the story those bad guys was abusing him for about a month, so what he could have done was that after the first and second attack is to leave the that place to another secure resident or better of inform the police, so that they would get them arrested but instead it seems he was enjoying hIs crypos being stolen from him. However you cannot compare cryptos with Fiat and besides it could be that the guy doesn't have any Fiat that's why they collected his crypto.

Some people talk too much, brag too much, post too much on all sorts of (a)social media, X or whatnot, Telegram, you name it.

There's absolutely no need to disclose if and how much crypto stuff you have. Keep a low profile and don't be a loudmouth about your crypto. Simple, but hard for many.

Understand and keep an eye on your coins privacy. Divide your wallets early and try to hide/obfuscate their linking. If you pay 0.001BTC from an UTXO of, let's say, 1 or more BTC, your change of 0.9989...BTC (or more) is a problem. To whom you paid 1mBTC now knows you have almost a full BTC and likely more, depending how your coins are linked together.

My question is that how did the gangster know that the person has a cryptocurrency? We need to know that we are not supposed to release our cryptocurrency privacy to people, and what might trigger those team of gangster to demands for cryptocurrency from that person maybe as result of the information they had or the person in question is living a luxury life style in he or her domain

The anonymous person that invited police, should be afraid, because after the gangster might be done with the first person, they will carry next operation to another person assume they succeeded, so what the anonymous did is the right thing, because nobody knows who would have be the next victim.

This is good advice, but you can't keep hiding without having another investment or infrastructure, and secondly those people might have operate with different informats that gives them information, even though you're living secret life, one day it will be open to the public, so what happens to the person in question, there's something behind it..

Be quiet. Be private. Don't talk about you owning any crypto in the public, some family members may also be considered public too. If.you do talk about cryptocurrency be as vague and discreet as possible. There are bad people everywhere online and offline. There will be more of these stories.

It is a link to a news site and not a security threat at all.

The person was threatened but he fell for it. The gang members could have seen him as a fool and use his family life and his life to threaten him which could be what could have possibly happened. But than goodness, they have all been sentenced to many years in prison.

I can not agree more.

Just like i said on a similar post few days ago, about crypto privacy, keep this shit to yourself.
No one needs to know how much you have. Act poor, don't flash and you'll be ok