The incident adds to a growing trend of criminals targeting crypto assets.
Russian authorities have detained a young man who tried to rob a cryptocurrency exchange by threatening its staff with smoke and airsoft grenades.
The attack comes amid rising numbers of criminal cases targeting crypto holdings and their owners, including through kidnappings and killings.
Russian police arrest crypto robber in St. Petersburg
A resident of Russia’s Leningrad Region has been arrested in St. Petersburg after attempting to rob a crypto exchange office at an apartment hotel.
Local police said the attack took place late on Saturday, in the building located on Khersonskaya Street of the country’s second-largest city.
The crypto robbery was prevented by officers who arrived at the scene after receiving a report about a noisy conflict that evening.
The 21-year-old attacker used strikeball and smoke grenades, the regional department of the interior ministry detailed in a press release, quoted by Fontanka.ru, Gazeta.ru and other Russian media on Sunday.
The man entered the office of the coin exchange service, detonated two of the airsoft grenades, and ignited the smoke bomb.
Then, he demanded that the employees of the crypto trading platform transfer its cryptocurrency funds to a wallet of his own.
The failed robber was apprehended with the help of servicemen from Russia’s National Guard, who came to the aid of the policemen.
Bomb disposal specialists who inspected the area confirmed that the devices used in the attack were in fact airsoft replicas that create a lot of noise and smoke without causing serious damage. Another two of those were seized from the perpetrator.
Russian authorities have opened a criminal investigation into the attempted robbery and a decision on whether the man should remain in pretrial detention is under consideration.
Crimes targeting cryptocurrency are on the rise in Russia
Cases in which criminals try to take hold of victims’ cryptocurrency have been growing in number over the past months and years.
Russian crypto owners are increasingly facing hybrid attacks, where wallet hacks are accompanied by theft and threats of physical violence, the “Delovoy Peterburg” publication noted in a recent report, highlighting a surge in kidnappings.
Perhaps the most remarkable example of this trend lately was the kidnapping of Russian crypto businessman and alleged scammer Roman Novak this past October.
Believed to be a millionaire in cryptocurrency, Novak was abducted with his wife in Dubai. The couple was tortured and murdered by other Russians who apparently wanted to gain access to his wallet.
There have been other, lower-profile cases. Two men were sentenced to eight years in prison this month for attacking a crypto blogger Ryazan and making him transfer over $160,000 worth of cryptocurrency to their wallets.
The frequency of such crimes prompted Russian officials to take steps to legalize the seizure of digital assets within criminal proceedings, either for the state or to return them to their owners.
In mid-November, the lower house of Russian parliament, the State Duma, adopted on second reading a bill designed to regulate the process.
The draft law, which was submitted by the government earlier this year, establishes a mechanism for this type of confiscation. It also allows Russian law enforcement to seek assistance from foreign crypto platforms such as exchanges, as reported by Cryptopolitan.
Also, this month, the Ministry of Internal Affairs in Moscow revealed that fake crypto investment offers rank among the favorite baits employed by Russian fraudsters this year.
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