British Men Jailed for a Combined 76 Years After Brutal Crypto Theft

A group of seven British men have been jailed for a combined 76 years after kidnapping and brutalizing a man in an attempt to acquire hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of crypto assets.

According to a report by local police, the unidentified victim was kidnapped from his home in Irlam, Greater Manchester in December, before being thrown into a van and forcibly taken to a nearby property with a bag over his head.

The victim was then tied to a bed and hit with a weapon by the men, acquiring bruising and burn marks. Police later seized a working firearm, three rounds of ammunition, an imitation firearm, an air pistol, knives, meat cleavers, a metal baseball bat, a machete, and a hammer from the scene.

The police received an anonymous call reporting concerns for welfare at the property, and upon arriving at the scene, saw a man running away from the address—later identified as Karl Johnson.

The group of men had reportedly visited the victim on multiple occasions throughout 2023 to threaten him into transferring his large crypto portfolio, estimated to be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, to them.

The wave of attacks began in January 2023, and across five successive incidents saw the victim being locked in a cupboard, drugged with morphine, assaulted with machetes and knives, and threatened with death. The victim had already paid the criminals over $124,250 (£100,000) in the run-up to the ultimate incident.

A forensic analysis of a pistol and ammunition that police seized from the scene of the final kidnapping matched a man called Jonathan Newns. He was jailed for 20 years for two counts of attempted robbery, two counts of false imprisonment, kidnapping, and possession of a prohibited firearm.

Another man, David Povey, was jailed for 20 years for robbery, kidnapping, false imprisonment, and attempted robbery. The other five men received sentences of between two and 14 years for their part in the series of crimes.

The police report did not elaborate on how the criminals found out about the victim’s crypto ownership.

In recent years, there have been a number of cases of criminals conducting targeted, violent home invasions on large crypto holders, both inside and outside the U.K.

In March 2020, a Scottish man was threatened with a machete in his own home in the town of Blantyre, near Glasgow, by a group attempting to get him to transfer his crypto holdings.

And in June 2024, the FBI revealed how a Florida-based group used sophisticated methods to identify and target their home invasion victims, such as unauthorized access to email accounts and physical surveillance.

Edited by Stephen Graves.