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