A man known as "Electrician" in Belarus was sentenced to 13 years in prison for extorting bitcoins.

A court in Belarus sentenced a resident of Grodno to 13 years in prison for a case of robbery and extortion of cryptocurrency amounting to more than 1 billion Belarusian rubles (27.1 billion rubles at the current exchange rate ). As reported by the Prosecutor's Office of Belarus, the man and his accomplice, posing as electricians, broke into the apartment of a resident of Minsk and demanded that he transfer bitcoins to them under torture, threatening to kill him.

The crime took place in August 2024. During the investigation, it was found that the attackers threatened a resident of Minsk with an air pistol similar to a Makarov pistol, with a mock-up of a silencer. The "electricians" also handcuffed the victim, tortured him with a stun gun and demanded that 5,750 bitcoins be transferred to their virtual wallet, said Kirill Chubkovets, deputy head of the main department of the Prosecutor General's Office of Belarus.

A resident of Minsk did not succumb to threats and did not transfer cryptocurrency to the extortionists. Then they tied him up and gave him 24 hours to meet their demands. According to Chubkovets, one of the criminals was caught, while the second managed to leave the country.

The court found a resident of Grodno guilty and sentenced him to 13 years of imprisonment in a correctional colony under strict conditions. The convicted individual was also fined 500 basic units (about 21 thousand Belarusian rubles), Chubkovets reported. He added that the sentence has not yet entered into legal force and may be appealed in the established manner.

Cases of cryptocurrency extortion involving violence and kidnappings are occurring more frequently in various countries around the world. Last week, in the USA, a group of teenagers was accused of kidnapping a person, extortion, and stealing crypto assets worth $4 million.

They ambushed the victim in the evening in a parking lot near a house in Las Vegas. Threatening with a gun, they forced him to get into his car, covered his head with a towel and told that they would kill him and his father in case of disobedience. He transferred cryptocurrency and NFTs to them, after which he was taken to another state and abandoned on the road. He had to walk about 5 miles to a gas station where he was able to call a friend.

In early May, in France, a group of men kidnapped the father of a crypto millionaire and demanded a ransom of €5 million to €7 million. It was reported that they cut off the kidnapped finger. The same injury was inflicted on the co-founder of the French company Ledger, David Balland, when he and his girlfriend were kidnapped at the end of January from a home in Paris, also demanding a ransom.