Kidnapped For Keys: Inside Israel’s Brutal $600,000 Bitcoin Torture Plot
An attacker violently robbed a Tel Aviv resident of almost $600,000 value of cryptocurrencies in his residence.
The sufferer was sure and tortured till he surrendered the passwords to his digital wallets. The perpetrator has since been arrested and charged with the crime.
Violent Crypto Robbery Shocks Israel
Israel skilled considered one of its most violent crypto-related crimes final month after three suspects adopted a person residence, sure him, and tortured him till he surrendered his Bitcoin, stablecoins, and crypto wallets.
Murad Mahajna, a Tel Aviv resident and the primary suspect, allegedly deliberate to rob a Herzliya resident after studying the sufferer owned Bitcoin. According to experiences, on September 7, Mahajna and two different suspects waited on the entrance of the victim’s apartment.
When the sufferer arrived, the three pressured him inside. The expenses state that after inside, they tied his fingers behind his again with a cable and beat him. When the sufferer refused to open his digital wallets, one of many attackers allegedly stabbed him twice.
At that second, the sufferer surrendered his belongings. According to experiences, the robbers stole a significant amount of cryptocurrency, totaling $547,260 in Bitcoin and about $42,248 in USDT.
They additionally took a Rolex watch valued at roughly $50,000, a Trezor crypto pockets, a laptop computer, about €5,000 in Euros, and a number of other thousand shekels in money.
Mahajna was arrested three days later.
Wrench Attacks Rise with Bitcoin Prices
With a number of incidents recorded, 2025 has change into the worst year for cryptocurrency theft.
A current Chainalysis report revealed that by mid-2025, the quantity of cryptocurrency stolen year-to-date was 17% greater than the whole stolen throughout 2022, which was beforehand the worst yr on report. Analysts challenge that if present charges persist, whole stolen funds may high $4 billion by the top of the yr.
The report famous a regarding pattern: personal wallet compromises are actually a rising supply of theft. This signifies that attackers are more and more specializing in particular person customers.
Data additionally means that “wrench assaults”—the place bodily violence or threats pressure crypto holders to give up funds—correlate with Bitcoin’s price movements. The pattern implies that attackers goal people during times of high asset worth.
Although violent assaults of this nature are comparatively unusual, the truth that they contain bodily hurt, together with extreme damage, abduction, and dying, considerably will increase the human value and severity of those incidents.
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