“Give us all your crypto or we will kill you.”
Those are the chilling words heard by one unlucky man recently snatched by criminals from a crypto conference in Vegas, taken out to the desert and threatened, a source described to The Post.
Decentralized and much harder to trace than dollars, cryptocurrencies are considerably easier for thieves to launder.
Therefore, anyone flaunting their wealth in Bitcoin, Dogecoin, Ethereum, or any of the myriad other currencies available should consider themselves a target.
That’s something influencer Amouranth — who earns around $2 million a month from selling videos on OnlyFans and gaming on Twitch — found out all about.
On the night of March 2, Amouranth, whose real name is Kaitlyn Siragusa, was lying in bed at her home in Houston when she heard a rattling noise outside.
Her husband, Nick Lee, was in his “man cave” in an adjacent building on their property. Siragusa, who had boasted online about having $ 20 million in crypto, called to alert him to the racket outside. Lee, sitting on the toilet at the time, told her that he suspected raccoons.
However, the main house’s front door was swiftly kicked in by a trio of masked intruders. Lee remained on speakerphone as Siragusa locked her bedroom door, which was also broken down. A fourth man, the getaway driver, waited outside.
“They started pistol-whipping me in the head and telling me that they want my cryptocurrency; I held up my fists to protect my face,” Siragusa told The Post.
Having been paid in Bitcoin, she had at least seven figures worth of the stuff, but access to it was stored in a nearby bank’s safety deposit box. “I told them that it was in the next building.”
Hearing the conversation, Lee knew that his wife and the home invaders were heading his way.
“I went into the gun locker, took out a handgun and positioned myself at the top of the stairs,” Lee, dressed only in his underwear, told The Post. “I told Kaitlyn to get down. Then I started shooting. I hit one guy in the gut, I think. They ran like characters in ‘Scooby Doo.’”
Incidents like that have led the crypto-wealthy to step up protection for themselves. “We now have 24-hour security and two well-trained German Shepherds for protection,” added Lee.
But they will continue to publicize their affluence. “People associate items that are flex-worthy with clout and importance,” Siragusa said. “That is what makes them want to follow you and live vicariously through you. It’s hard to avoid if you want to stay relevant.”
Lucky for Lee and Siragusa, their crypto was not immediately accessible. Holders of crypto have two options for storing it: Software or hardware wallets. The former can, theoretically, be hacked, and the latter are the most secure method and are favored by serious investors. However, that means they have to keep physical devices with the ‘keys’ to access their crypto safe, and that small black box contains the total value of their holdings – be it $10 or $10 million.
Explaining more about the man who was kidnapped from the Vegas conference, a crypto booster who recently lowered their profile told The Post: “Some guys grabbed him, threw him into a car and drove him out to the desert. [When they threatened him,] he believed them. They got his crypto and digital assets. It didn’t leave him broke, but he lost millions.”
Incidents like that have sparked panic in the crypto community but, become a boon for companies who specialize in offering personal protection.
In fact, while super fast cars and Rolex watches were once the ultimate signifiers of crypto wealth, the new status symbol is a private security detail.
“My house is never alone, and you will never see me alone,” Brock Pierce, an early cryptocurrency investor and founder of the popular coin Tether, told The Post. “Alone time is something that I have had to give up on in exchange for never being vulnerable.”
Many of the crypto kidnappings go unreported – a Bitcoin source in LA told The Post of a “friend who got kidnapped, thrown into a car and pistol whipped. He was told to give up his password but jumped out as the car sped down the highway” – others have recently been impossible to keep under wraps.
In Chicago, three family members and a nanny were kidnapped from a townhouse. Their identities were shielded in federal documents, but the father was notified, via the Chinese social media app WeChat, that he needed to cough up $15 million in crypto if he wanted to see his family alive again. The dad did as instructed, and the family was dumped off in front of a dry cleaner.
Law enforcement later found the kidnappers, but $9 million worth of crypto remains unaccounted for.
Meanwhile, in central France this past January, David Balland, co-founder of the French company Ledger, which produces crypto storage devices, was snatched, along with his wife. Kidnappers took them to separate locales. Balland’s abductors mutilated his finger and sent a photo of it to his colleagues at Ledger, demanding a large, but undisclosed, ransom.
Within 48 hours, after a partial payment was made, French police tracked down the victims and got them released.
While the daredevil who hopped out of a speeding car is described by the source as “a tough guy, somebody you wouldn’t want to f—k with,” the typical crypto cat leaves a different impression.
“Speaking broadly,” Adam Healy, a former US Marine and founder of the security firm Station 70, told The Post, “a lot of them are computer nerds.”
Healy puts on training sessions designed to teach wealthy people how to protect themselves in bad situations. He also provides personal security for a booming segment of crypto one-percenters. He believes the drug cartels already have a hand in cryptocurrency-related ransom schemes and that they will only get more involved.
“With the drug trade and human trafficking being disrupted at the border, they’ll seek alternate sources of revenue. We’ll see affiliates of cartels or the cartels themselves targeting holders of cryptocurrency.”
Bad actors in this realm abound, and their hits are becoming increasingly common. “Kidnappings of crypto investors are definitely on the rise,” Steve Krystek, CEO of PFC Safeguards, a personal security company, told The Post. “A lot of the people who come into this money are flashy, and they’re signaling that they have wealth.”
According to the LA source, the crypto robberies are anything but random and disorganized. “There are gang group chats about kidnapping people,” she said. “Think about it. Maybe you used to rob banks, and you now rob crypto investors.”
In fact, a pseudonymous influencer makes clear that owning a lot of crypto is not so different from being a one-man Citibank.
“People talk about crypto and think it’s cool to be your own bank,” crypto trader AdioKing told The Post. “But if you screw up, you lose everything. There are consequences for your actions, and you have to be responsible for them.”
Pierce, who’s been in the space longer than most and has had the ups and downs that come with being a public crypto figure, offers sage advice to those who crave the digital-cash limelight: “Bragging about your wealth doesn’t do anything for you. In this day and age, anonymity is the ultimate luxury.”
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