How crypto currency thieves stole $700 million from victims, frequently employing tried-and-true methods

 

"Having your crypto currency stolen is particularly painful. Even if someone takes your money and puts it in their own crypto currency wallet, it is still viewable online since every transaction is documented on a digital ledger called a block chain”

 

 " Helen, who lost almost $315,000 (£250,000) to burglars, adds, "You can see your money there on the public block chain, but there's nothing you can do to get it back."

She compares it to witnessing a robber stack your valuables on the other side of an impassable abyss.
Helen and her husband Richard (not his real name), who live in the UK, have been purchasing and hoarding Cardano crypto currency for seven years.

Unlike money saved in more traditional methods, they were drawn to the prospect of investing in a digital asset with the potential for significant value growth. They took precautions to protect their digital keys even though they knew it was dangerous.
However, hackers managed to gain access to their cloud storage account, which contained details on their crypto currency wallets and how to access them.

 

Following a brief test transfer in February 2024, the thieves quickly and covertly transferred all of the couple's coins to their own digital wallets.
Then, with no way to stop it, the couple watched for months as their money was transferred between wallets. (The fundamental paradox of crypto currency is that, although users can opt to be publicly untraceable, all transactions are publicly trackable.)
Richard and Helen don't have much money. He is a composer, she works as a personal assistant, and they had great expectations for their Cardano investments.

 

"We'd been buying these coins for so long... We used every scrap of money we could find to buy more," Richard adds. "Aside from my parents' deaths, this theft is the worst thing to happen to me."
Helen has been determined to get their money back ever since. She acquired comprehensive reports from the Cardano developers and other law enforcement agencies. Now, no one can uncover the offenders, despite the fact that she has their wallet address.
They intend to accumulate sufficient funds to hire private detectives in an effort to track down the hackers. It makes you feel powerless, but I'm going to keep trying," she says.

 

An increase in cybercrime

 

According to a study conducted in August 2024 for the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), over 12% of British adults—almost seven million people—owned crypto currency.
560 million people are thought to be crypto currency owners worldwide. However, stealing increased along with ownership. The pandemic caused the value of crypto currency to soar, which in turn led to an explosion in attacks on the sector.

 

According to investigators at block-chain analysis company Chainalysis, thefts totaled over $3.4 billion (£2.5 billion) in 2025, making it yet another successful year for crypto currency thieves. Since 2020, the annual figure has stayed almost the same.

 

Massive cyberattacks on cryptocurrency companies are stealing the majority of the money. For instance, in February 2025, hackers from North Korea stole $1.5 billion (£1.1 billion) from the crypto currency exchange Bybit.
The wealthy crypto currency companies compensate the losses in this instance as well as the great majority of others, with no effect on individuals. However, attacks on individual crypto currency investors also increased in 2025.

 

These individual attacks increased from 40,000 in 2022 to 80,000 last year, according to Chainalysis analysis.
An estimated 20% of all crypto currency value taken, or $713 million (£532 million), came from hacking, scams, or coercion of individuals.
However, the business notes that not all victims may opt to report thefts publicly, so the figure might be far higher. You might be left on your own when this occurs.

 

Banks and credit card firms cover a lot of thefts and frauds in traditional banking. In the UK, you may file a complaint with the Financial Ombudsman Service and receive compensation through the Financial Services Compensation Scheme. According to the FCA, crypto currency is still very risky and mostly uncontrolled in the UK. "If something goes wrong, it is unlikely you will be protected so you should be prepared to lose all your money."
Searching for "Binance account hacked" online serves as a sobering reminder of this. Although Binance is the biggest crypto currency exchange in the world, with an estimated 1.4 million members in the UK, the page on its website that provides guidance to victims of theft is prohibited in the UK.

 

Since 2023, the company has not been taking on new UK clients because the FCA has not granted it operating authorization. However, criminals don't give a damn about the location of their victims, and they target people without distinction wherever in the world.
The "under-documented frontier for crypto crime" is how Chainalysis has characterized these attacks on individuals.

 

They contend that enhanced security procedures at big services may have driven "attackers toward individuals perceived as easier targets" and attribute the volume of crimes to the number of people entering the crypto currency space as investors as coin values have increased.
Additionally, the likelihood of being targeted increases with the amount of crypto currency you own and your level of publicity about it; small-time holders, or "hodlers," as the community refers to them, are much less likely to be impacted.

 

Muggings, burglaries, and "wrench attacks"

 

As for the thieves, they could be anywhere.

Block-chain experts from the crypto currency analysis firm Elliptic issued a warning in October that North Korean state-sponsored hackers are increasingly focusing on affluent crypto currency owners. Young con artists and hackers from foreign nations are also prevalent.
Evan Tangeman, 22, entered a guilty plea in December in the United States to being a member of the Social Engineering Enterprise, a group of crypto-currency criminals accused of stealing over $260 million (£194 million) between October 2023 and May 2025.

 

According to the prosecution, they used compromised databases to target wealthy crypto-currency owners, deceiving them into believing they were crypto-currency exchanges and convincing them to send money.
The gang's members, who were primarily young men from the United States, are alleged to have used the pilfered money to purchase designer handbags, costly vehicles, and private jets to give away at nightclubs.

Prosecutors claim that in several instances, the gang planned home invasions to seize electronics that held the keys to crypto-currency stashes

 

 

“In the crypto-currency ecosystem, burglaries and muggings have become so frequent that they are sometimes referred to as "wrench attacks" since perpetrators have been known to threaten victims with spanners.
Spanish crypto-currency thieves attempted to coerce a man and woman into giving up their crypto-currency in April of last year.
The victim and his partner were detained for several hours while the thieves attempted to access their crypto-currency wallets after the man was shot in the leg, according to Spanish police. The woman was eventually freed, but her partner was still unaccounted for; his body was later discovered in a forest.”

 

In relation to the case, four individuals in Denmark were accused, and five more were detained in Spain.
Similar incidents have occurred in France on multiple occasions, including one in which a kidnapping attempt was caught on camera.

 

Early in 2025, David Balland, a co-founder of Ledger, a crypto-currency security firm, and his spouse were kidnapped from their central French house.
Police saved them a few days later, but during the extortion attempt, Balland's finger was severed.
Then, last month, masked men stopped a car traveling between Oxford and London and made one of the occupants transfer £1.5 million worth of bit-coin, leading UK police to detain six people.

According to Phil Ariss, director of UK Public Sector Relations at block-chain intelligence company TRM Labs, criminal organizations who are already at ease using violence to further their objectives are likely to switch to crypto-currency.

 

"As long as there's a viable route to launder or liquidate stolen assets, it makes little difference to the offender whether the target is a high-value watch or a crypto wallet. “Since crypto-currencies are now widely accepted, our conventional perceptions of physical danger and robbery must change.


Since few "wrench attacks" are reported to the public, it is challenging to pinpoint their actual frequency. However, it seems that these kinds of thefts represent a tiny portion of the expanding problem of personal crypto currency thefts.

 

Additionally, a lot of thieves rely on tried-and-true hacking or fraud techniques, which are getting easier because so much data is being stolen in large-scale cyber-attacks on businesses.

 

"The number of Bit-coin millionaires is increasing."

 

"Data is a common problem as Bit-coin millionaires are becoming so frequent, and there are stolen databases that are enriching the target list all the time," explains Matthew Jones, the founder of the crypto-currency security company Haven.
One hacker contacted by the BBC cited a data breach at Kering, the parent firm of premium goods like Gucci and Balenciaga, as an example.
The databases display the amount of money consumers have spent at the stores, along with millions of customer names and contact information.

 

According to the hacker the BBC spoke with, he paid $300,000 (£224,000) for the spreadsheets so he could target the largest spenders.
He says he conned several Coin base users out of at least $1.5 million (£1.1 million) in crypto-currency using the information and details from another stolen database.

 

The culprit proved to the BBC that he had $700,000 (£522,000) in Bit-coin, which he claims originated from a single victim, and that he was in possession of the stolen data. I purchase hacked databases and compare them with others to look for wealthy individuals as well as current phone numbers and email addresses. He asserted, "I'm still moving down the list and quickly tripled my money."
Other than the fact that he attends a US institution, the hacker would not provide any personal information.

 

He responded, "Neither, I am only interested in making money," when asked if he thought of himself as a hacker or a con artist.
Kering previously assured the BBC that its IT systems had been protected following the data breach and emphasized that no bank account details, credit card information, or government-issued identification numbers had been stolen in the attack. Kering did not reply to a request for comment regarding this.

 

According to Matthew Jones from Haven, he had his own crypto-currency stolen, which led him to create a wallet with additional security features.
He claims that features like geo-fencing to prevent transactions outside of a person's home or place of employment and ongoing biometric verification to ensure that only the owner can transmit coins are now necessary. Additionally, he is incorporating a panic button inside the digital wallet.

 

"People are walking around with millions of dollars in crypto these days and wallets have no ceiling on how much can be held - or how much can be stolen in one go," he states.

 

Being 'your own bank'

 

What the market promotes as "self-custody" is the main focus of Matthew Jones's crypto-currency wallet.
Haven's app is comparable to Trust wallet and Metamask. Although tangible products like USB memory sticks are offered by other firms like Trezor and Ledger, the concept remains the same: you can operate your own bank.
However, as you have no safeguards at all, this increased freedom also comes with more risk.

You cannot even file a complaint with a crypto-currency exchange if your coins are taken from your own self-custody wallet.

 

When asked if the independence of "being your own bank" outweighs the growing hazards, Jones maintains that it does. He contends that banks have the authority to suspend or terminate your account for general, frequently ambiguous reasons and that they are not really liable to their clients.
Additionally, he claims that he objected to being questioned by conventional financial institutions about topics like why he was taking money out of an account.

After deciding to run their own bank, Helen and Richard lost all of their money. The fact that a large portion of the funds came from the selling of Richard's mother's home following her passing was what made it very heartbreaking.

 

"My mother's money has gone," Richard claims. "She stole all the grafting she had done for my future. We were briefly homeless after having to sell our automobile and musical instruments."
However, they are not completely abandoning cryptocurrencies. They intend to immediately return to cryptocurrency investing once they receive their money back or save enough.