Court Will Prosecute 2 Russians For Stealing 86 Bitcoins From Crypto Miner
The Kirovsky Court of Tomsk will soon try two men for assaulting another resident of the Siberian town who made a living by mining cryptocurrency. At the time 360 million rubles (over $4.8 million) were able to extract the coins, according to Russian news outlet Bits Media. The crime reportedly took place in October 2021 and the cryptocurrency miner was attacked by criminals when he was leaving his home and one of them threatened him with what appeared to be a gun and forced him inside the apartment. was taken back. Then his accomplice came in and the two forced the victims to log into their accounts on a cryptocurrency exchange and transferred them $86 in bitcoins from a wallet that contained 90 bitcoins. It is not clear why their entire balance was not withdrawn, while only a small number of bitcoins were withdrawn. Russian law enforcement managed to track down and detain the suspects in St. Petersburg and have pleaded guilty and returned an equal portion of the stolen cash in fiat money – 35 million rubles (currently close to $479,000 at exchange rates). The second person was also arrested later. The regional prosecutor’s office found the assailants definitively accused of a “robbery committed by a group of persons on a special kind of scale” under the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation.
Attacks against people who own and earn cryptocurrencies are on the rise in Russia, and according to one figure, in July 2021, armed robbers looted a large mining farm near Moscow and took away the equipment used to make the digital currency. Dozens of video cards were stolen. Last year, $1 million in Tether was apparently taken from a crypto trader in the Russian capital.
