Topic: Physical Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Attacks that Have Been Reported Worldwide (Read 371 times)

lovesmayfamilis and adaseb, I am returning to this comment  because although I understand your perspective, in reality, it is applicable in developed countries. In my country Nigeria, the situation is significantly different. Over here, one can be silent and not share any details or involve in any crypto discussion online and still be at risk of attack.

Apart from thieves, scammers, and hackers, we face a concerning issue with the agency tasked to uphold the law, protect lives and maintain order. Regrettably, in my country, the police themselves pose a substantial threat to individuals who possess cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin.

Recently, there have been incidents where 3,000 USDT was transferred to police officers' wallets by a young Nigerian. In another instance some rogue officers demanded extortion payments in Bitcoin from another young Nigerian.

You may ask, how this happens. Well, in my country, the privacy of individuals, particularly the youth, is frequently invaded by the police. They search through their phones for specific keywords like "Bitcoin," "cryptocurrency," or "Binance." At gunpoint, individuals are forced to transfer their cryptocurrencies or risk losing their lives. There are other unreported cases. The Police(rouge officers) are the ones perpetrating these crimes against cryptocurrency holders in our nation.

Yeah I don’t tell anyone I own crypto for this reason. Stocks sure, you can’t really steal is someone is a millionaire in stocks. It’s all digital and we don’t hold the actual certificates. Crypto is different.

In USA I guess it’s safer because many own crypto here but in many poor countries it’s risky. Especially since crypto always has this bias where if you own crypto, you must be rich. This hasn’t been true for 10 years pretty much but everyone thinks this.

Best way to avoid these attacks is to never mention crypto to anyone. If someone sees you are rich, just say you got lucky with some Tesla or Nvidia stocks.

I added a new cryptocurrency attack to the list.

As Bitcoin becomes popular cases like @OP stated will happen more frequently, it is not about Bitcoin or cryptocurrency but rather perpetrators see that there is something valuable they can steal from people, reason why they rob them.


No one can scan any private property of a person unless there is a warrant from the court.  Even personal frisking is illegal if there is no issued warrant to do so.  Anyone can object for any checking, even a car passing a checkpoint can refuse to open its car window and can just put on the light for the security to scan.


I don't know why do we need to carry our cryptocurrency on our mobile phones, it is very risky but I respect that it is an individual preference, but for me, unless the person is trading using their mobile phone or is using cryptocurrency as a mode of payment for purchases, I do not think there is a reason for anyone to "carry" their cryptocurrency on phones.

Yep, it should illegal but it isn't because the ones supposed to protect us are the real criminals. If you read about the #EndSARS protests that hit the country in 2020 where young Nigerians hit the streets to protest against Police brutality, this was one of the reasons they protested.

This is a good one but not all of us can go without our crypto apps on our mobile phones. We need it there for convenience.

From all the above cases, we must conclude that any unnecessary information about us on the Internet can add to our troubles. Posts on social networks shouting about a beautiful life will be taken under close attention, either by scammers or supervisory authorities. They always say that our language can become our enemy. Stories where you should remain silent about your activities will not be useful. I did not study all the cases of attacks on cryptocurrency owners, but if you imagine that if people behaved more modestly, they would probably avoid such problems.

Yeah, is such a long thread, I was just able to pick out some few cases because of how long the thread is, I really need to appreciate the OP for taking out time to compile all these cases, is really a job well done.
Without been told, you will think cases like this don't exist, but here we are with such a long list of them.

Attacks of this kind will only get more common as time goes by, since there is the false assumption on the minds of many people that believe that anyone that is part of this market is loaded, and if given the opportunity they are not going to think twice and steal from you, also we must consider the place where we live, since there are countries out there in which the police is corrupt, ineffective and in many cases they are criminals themselves, so the best strategy for someone living in a country like that is to bring no attention to themselves and carry nothing on them which could out them as a bitcoin holder.

You have done so well to gather this solid information for members of the forum. I never knew that there were a lot of cryptocurrency attack cases like this. It took me some time to go through them. I was only able to go through two of them but i am interested to go through as many as i can so that i can learn a lot from their various experiences.

If it's possible to bump on every page so that you can update this thread regularly and am sure to visit this thread form to time.

Seriously? What about the situation of a passenger who has $1000 of Nigerian money in their wallet? Still, the police will treat them similarly and rob them or let them go.

If citizens are robbed by the one who are supposed to safeguard them means the country is seriously messed up and needs some serious change.

This is a long list, and I am sure there are many more cases that were not reported or broadcast by the media. Even if you had reported your own case, it would not have been reported to any media outlets, and you would be afraid to do so after being threatened with death by security personnel, those who are supposed to protect lives and properties are now the robbers themselves. Living in a country where you know your money is not safe when stored in a mobile wallet, it is preferable to store it on a desktop that you do not need to carry around. You can always delete a mobile wallet if necessary and redownload it back when you have your password stored safe and can’t be forgotten easily.

really? i didn't expect this, i'm really sorry about what happened to you. didn't think that owning bitcoin was the same as a crime in your country, you even had to be handcuffed, beaten, and threatened with a gun, even though you didn't do anything.

what they did was like a real robbery, but with police authority, and it was very disgusting and i doubted that the wallet provided by them was a government wallet, but it was a private wallet and they would use the money for fun. how shameless they are.

Trust me, you should have created more reserve comments. Not that I pray for more attacks, but they are prone to happen, especially around Bitcoin that worths a lot of money. It is quite disturbing that some of these attacks happen in person. For a quick judgment, I could say that they must have carelessly mentioned some how that they have BTC hence their attack, however, it’s not the case for all. For instance, those who had to do with Bitcoin ATM, and I don’t see how one will go to the ATM without everyone knowing that he/she is into crypto. So let’s think, does this mean using Bitcoin ATM is not safe as people could perceive you as rich, hence plan an ambush?

I love that this post is a deliberate effort to enlighten and guide anyone Crypto holder or investor.
It's quite sad about the different cases I have even heard about as regards the attacks targeted at crypto holders or investors on social media or on other news channels. Here again I had to read same tales and the only thing that comes to my mind as a thought is that, what if everyone crypto holder stops to talk about it to anyone mostly when excited or tipsy or  for even campaign sake and just leave it to remain a secret that no one knows about.

Still, it wouldn't do well to publicize or portray cryptocurrencies as a blessing to humanity and even if the cases of such attacks reduce, there's hackers and scammers to contend with.

Everyone crypto or Bitcoin holder should do well to learn from the experience of those who have been attacked before and do well to adhere to security tips and protocols inorder to keep ones wallet safe from hackers and scammers and even physical attackers.

You have done a food job in bringing all these together, thanks for your time and efforts towards making it a good task and a weldone job.

If we are to go by this ones you've mentioned OP, they are only the ones being recognized for one reason or the other, maybe they are part of the greatest financial attack that involves a huge amount of money, i believe that there are many unreported ones that we don't even know about and that have happened and cost alot, but we are only privileged to see those majorly reported through the media.

That's a hell of work you have done here and your reserved post made me think that you are not stopping and going to publish more scams and hacking attacks I can't imagine the efforts and time you must have been put into this thread but it is awesome and really a big contribution to the forum.

Reading half of them will make a newbie smart enough that he/she can avoid 90% of the scams and attacks because most of these scams will teach you not to make the same mistakes that the victims had done, and talking about Hal Finey, I was not aware of the attack done to him until a few weeks ago maybe a month has been passed.

But the thing is everything that happened to him was way worse because he was on the ground while being swatted and his wife was worrying that he couldn't swallow even the lubricants in his mounts and he might be choking, I can't believe why hackers or scammers would do such thing but one thing I have learned so far is they are mean and cruel and they don't care either this is your whole life savings or not they just after the money.

Again a great contribution and keep it up dear, it will be work as a basic topic to suggest newbies to avoid scams and hacks.

I question the adding of the BATMs being stolen / attacked.
If you just listed all the regular ATM thefts / attacks theymos would have to get a lot more hardware to run the forum as it would melt down under the load of listing them.

I would wager that a lot of the thefts of them were 'because that is where the cash is' nothing to do with crypto specifically.
And probably a bunch of those had no idea it was a BATM, just the people put cash in.

-Dave

I read there are many Nigerians directly trade P2P and it seems like a norm because the banks not accept funds related to Bitcoin. If there are many cases of crime related to direct P2P, why do you guys still use direct P2P and even recommend it?

Under adrenaline will make you to follow any instructions from the police, even you're aware and refuse their request, they might feel you're someone who's suspicious and trying to find more about your identity.

Your phone was scanned at a police checkpoint? That should be illegal, since you are just a normal person passing by and not an arrested suspect!

You gotta move your crypto to a desktop wallet so that they can't search it again, because nobody's going to make you open your laptop or desktop and show them all of the EXE or applications that belong to cryptocurrency (hopefully).

I just read the summary and I felt bad for those people who experience this. It's unfortunate that some individuals abuse their authority in such a way and victims cant do anything about it. But I know this raise aware ess thru this forum atleast.