London Gang Convicted of Kidnapping Barber They Thought Was a Bitcoin Billionaire—He Wasn’t

A court in London has convicted four people in the failed kidnapping and the moers attack of a Belgian hairdresser. The group attracted him to London with promises of luxury and company after he noticed that he was on a Bitcoin Fortuin.

But to their surprise, when his attackers demanded that he gave them access to his funds, the victim revealed that he had a little more than $ 9 (£ 6.71) in his crypto wallet. In surprise, the abductors lowered their demand to $ 67,000 (about £ 50,000) and eventually settled $ 2,700 (or £ 2,000) of his bank account.

The victim, Quentin Cepeljac, was abducted in May 2023 after he was lured to the VK, he was attacked, held up at night and later released after his kidnappers heard that he had no significant crypto companies, according to one report by Time.

One of the attackers, Davina Raaymakers, was friends with Cepeljac on social media weeks before. After he claimed to be a successful crypto dealer, she invited him to London and offered what she described as a luxury flat.

Instead, she led him to a bed in Shepherd’s Bush, where three men, including her boyfriend, were already waiting. They then was ambushed Cepeljac, kept a machete in his neck and a knife in his leg and demanded access to his crypto portion.

After they realized that he had no significant crypto companies, they were satisfied with cash from his bank account and let him go.

The newspaper reported that all four defendants were admitted to blackmail and identified Isleworth Crown as the location. Although judicial data does not remain available, the newspaper says that the police have met Cepeljac in St. Pancras and used telephone and Airbnb data to identify the suspects.

Decrypt has submitted FOI requests to verify the costs, supplications and conviction data.

Crypto ‘flex culture’ and key attacks

The case has become part of a broader trend known as “Wrench Attacks”, in which observed crypto holders are extorted by physical strength. These attacks are directly aimed at people and bypass digital security.

In a similar case, a Tiktok -Crypto -influencer in France was abducted and held for ransom, only to be released after his attackers discovered that he was broke. The gang had followed him on the basis of social media and believed in his supposed wealth.

“Flex culture in Crypto is dangerous: criminals Targing holders just as they would if you would post an Instagram story with a luxury watch from the swimming pool,” said Eyal Gruper, founder and CEO of self-cherry recovery platform Ritrek, said Decrypt.

Flex culture, derived from the snake term “bending”, refers to showing out wealth, status or possessions, often to impress others.

“Opportunitists are lurking in the same channels that you use, after the insiders feeds of the industry and monitoring of the conferencehash tags to force anyone who is worth to see,” said Gruper.

In Crypto, this showing-off wallet, SALDI, NFT purchases, profitable transactions or high-profile trips to branch events.

Yet some see the focus on flex culture as misplaced.

“Flex culture is not unique for crypto, it exists in the industry,” said Callum Mitchell-Clark, co-founder of Tokenized Basket Management Protocol Alvara, said Decrypt.

Mitchell-Clark claims that pointing to flex culture is missing the point and are risks to bend off the responsibility of perpetrators.

“Blaming violent crime shifts away from the real issue: the criminals,” he said. “Violence is a choice, not a consequence of visibility, and we should not apologize by pointing fingers to victims.”