Two residents of the Russian city of Tomsk are to stand trial for a “massive robbery” involving the theft of millions of rubles worth of cryptocurrency from a local mining company. The digital coins were stolen at gunpoint from their owners, authorities said, adding that both offenders are currently in custody.
Thieves Face Trial for Armed Robbery of Cryptocurrency Miner in Russia
The Kirovsky court in Tomsk will soon put two men on trial for an attack on another resident of the Siberian city who made his living mining cryptocurrency. They were able to rob him of coins worth more than 360 million rubles (over $4.8 million) at the time, Russian crypto news outlet Bits.media reported.
The crime took place in October 2021. The perpetrators attacked the cryptocurrency miner as he was leaving his home. One of them threatened him with something resembling a gun and took him back inside his apartment.
Then the accomplices arrived and the two had the victim log into his crypto exchange account and transfer 86 BTCfrom the wallet, which contained 90BTC; they transferred BTC. We do not know why we decided not to withdraw the full balance.
Russian law enforcement successfully tracked down and detained one of the suspects in St. Petersburg. He later pleaded guilty and returned some of the stolen digital cash, Fiat currency worth 35 million rubles (nearly $479,000 at current exchange rates) The second man was later arrested.
The regional prosecutor’s office charged the perpetrators with “robbery by a particularly large group” under the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. They face up to 15 years in prison and a fine of up to 1 million rubles.
Attacks against people who own and earn cryptocurrency are on the rise in Russia: in July 2021, armed robbers ransacked a large mining farm near Moscow and stole dozens of video cards used to mint digital currency. Also last year, $1 million in tethers were stolen from crypto traders in the Russian capital.
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