Man fakes his own kidnapping and steels $1.15 millions of bitcoin


According to the head of Venezuela’s Police Agency Cuerpo de Investigaciones Cienti´ficas Penales y Criminali´sticas (CICPC), Douglas Rico, a 23-year-old Venezuelan financial advisor, Andres Jesus Dos Santos Hernandez faking his own kidnapping allegedly defrauded and stole more than $1 million in Bitcoin from his clients whose funds he controlled to become Bitcoin millionaire. Rico published Hernandez’s photo, along with a “wanted” bulletin in an Instagram post.
As per the instagram
post, Rico the director of the Scientific, Criminal and Criminal Investigations
Corps (CIPC, scientific police) which is essentially the nation’s equivalent of
the FBI in the U.S. Hernandez worked as investment intermediary for many clients
and institutions that are linked to crypto activities. Rico statements says
that Hernandez emptied the wallets of his clients and transfer the Bitcoin
holding from his client’s Binance accounts to several wallet addresses to the
tune of $1,150,000. Hernandez claimed that he had been kidnapped, and that his
captors forced him to withdraw the money.
Hernandez is now
running away and his whereabouts are unknown. He is wanted by the country’s
largest national police agency for the $1.15 million fraud case. While it is
still unclear how Hernández got hold of the said Bitcoin. Decrypt attempted to
contact the CICPC to find out whether it would issue international alerts.
Hernández is.
Other events
related to kidnapping
This is not the
first time that kidnappers are asking for ransom in cryptos. In Venezuela
Bitcoin miners who are Bitcoin users had to be careful from prying eyes of
criminals who are looking for cryptocurrency’s traceability due the asset is
priced in dollars. A Venezuelan businessman named Gustavo Torres Gonzalez was
kidnapped three weeks ago and was murdered as his family failed to pay 1.5 BTC ransom
as demanded by his captors.

Indrani Bose
CBW - External Analyst
INDIA