Inside the ruthless home invasion of a violent cryptocurrency theft gang

She refused to give up her password and was, the indictment said, so disheartened by the hackers’ earlier theft of most of her funds that she told the men to just shoot her. Instead, they stole her engagement ring, two iPhones, a laptop, the charger for the neurostimulator used by the other family member as a treatment for Parkinson’s disease, and whatever cash they could find, then left.

For their next victim, prosecutors describe how the group targeted a man who Seemungal knew was a fellow SIM swap hacker and who he claimed had in fact robbed him of a substantial sum of cryptocurrency in 2021. To prepare that robbery in September 2022, they began repeatedly sending pizza deliveries to their target in hopes of conditioning him to show up at his door without arousing suspicion. When the time came for the planned robbery, however, their target wasn’t home, so they took a stand, then pointed their guns at their target when he arrived home.

Over the next hour, the group tied the victim’s hands behind his back with boot laces and demanded he hand over access to his cryptocurrency accounts. When the account he gave them access to contained only a small amount in cryptocurrency, they put him in the backseat of their rented Cadillac, shot him in the face, drove away, and began extorting cryptocurrency money from his friends and father . Finally, about 120 miles from the victim’s home, the men forced the victim out of the car and told him to kneel down. He instead ran away, while one of the men fired a gun from the moving car, although it is not clear whether the shot was intended to hit the victim or simply to scare him. One of the group, who has not yet been charged, would later say that St. Felix had suggested killing their prisoner.

A few months later, prosecutors write, the group carried out its next attack against another victim it believed was a wealthy cryptocurrency hacker, this time in Texas. While traveling from Florida to begin surveillance of their target, St. Felix had fled law enforcement in Louisiana, flipped his car at more than 90 miles per hour and broken his leg. The other members of the Florida crew had been arrested after the crash. So the raid was carried out by a newly recruited team based in the Houston area.

Just a few days before Christmas 2022, the Texas group broke into the target’s home, tied the hands of his family members with zip ties, and repeatedly punched him in the face and demanded he give them access to his cryptocurrency. Prosecutors say they stuck knives and forks under her mother’s fingernails and hit her in the face with a gun. They burned their target’s arm with a hot iron to force him to provide his crypto account details, and at one point attempted to punch him in the genitals.

The victim eventually told his tormentors that he had buried a device that stored his cryptocurrency in the backyard. (In fact, that hardware wallet, containing $1.4 million in cryptocurrency, was in a moving box in the home that the thieves never found.) When the thieves took the victim to the backyard to locate the device, he climbed over a fence and ran away. The thieves stole $150,000 in cash and some jewelry and then left.

A final work

In early 2023, after those relatively unsuccessful extortion attempts, a Seemungal associate allegedly began feeding tips to the group, hacking potential targets’ emails to see the size of their cryptocurrency holdings and sending those contacts to the home invasion team. A Telegram chat obtained by prosecutors shows a discussion of potential targets, including someone with $1.2 million in Texas and another person with $600,000 in Tennessee.

A screenshot of the group’s Telegram chat as they discussed potential targets. A “lick” here is slang for a target for a robbery.

Courtesy of the Department of Justice

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