29 Year Old foreigner abducted and murdered in Kyiv over 3 BTC worth $200,000

A 29-year-old foreigner was abducted and murdered a few hours ago in Kyiv, Ukraine, for over 3 Bitcoins worth approximately $200,000, according to reports by the communications department of the National Police.

Four men, aged 24 to 29, have been arrested by Kyiv police for the kidnapping and killing of the foreign national. At midnight, information about a man's kidnapping was reported to the Kiev police. Screams were heard, and multiple unidentified individuals were observed beating and coercing a man into a car by the residents of a house in the Solomianskyi district. All police units and operatives of the Main and Solomianskyi police departments were dispatched to the kidnappers' location as part of an immediate special police operation to find and apprehend them in Kyiv and the surrounding area, according to the statement.

It was later discovered that a foreign national, age 29, had been abducted. Four guys, ages 24 to 29, completed the task. The offenders were taken into custody by law enforcement officials and the KORD special unit.

The perpetrators had been planning the crime for some time. After learning that the man possessed bitcoins valued at roughly seven million hryvnias, they made the decision to seize them. After locating his address, the defendants beat him as he was driving home at midnight and took him to an abandoned building in the Kyiv region. After making the victim transfer bitcoins to their cryptocurrency wallet under duress, they strangled him there. They took the body to the forest and buried it there, altered the car's license plates and appearance, and cashed in the cryptocurrency to hide any evidence of the crime," the police continued.

The detainees had their cars, money, and other tangible evidence taken from them. Notification of suspicion was given to the men, and they were placed under arrest without the option to be released on bail. According to the report, they face life imprisonment.

Lefteris Karapetsas, the founder of Rotkiapp, an open-source portfolio management app that protects your privacy, wrote, “How did they know he had cryptocurrency? How did they force him to transfer the Bitcoin?  Why did he do it? Lastly, once they had the Bitcoin why did they kill him? They probably knew that killing him would put the authorities on a manhunt against them.”

Additionally, Karapetsas said that he mentioned the rising frequency of these incidents in his EthCC talk. He advised crypto traders with lots of digital assets to practice good OPSEC and physical security. “Bragging is not worth your life," he concluded.

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