An American tourist visiting London claims he was abducted, drugged, and robbed of his life savings by a man posing as an Uber driver.
Jacob Irwin-Cline, a 30-year-old former software developer from Oregon, says the assailant drained $123,000 worth of Bitcoin, XRP, and other digital assets from his crypto wallets during the early hours of May 9, local media outlet MyLondon initially reported on Wednesday.
Tourist Lured into Fake Uber After Night Out in London
Irwin-Cline had just left The Roxy nightclub in Soho after a night out when a driver, calling out the alias on his Uber account, flagged him down.
Believing the car and driver matched the app details, he got into the vehicle.
He now believes he was lured into a lookalike vehicle operated by a criminal linked to a fraudulent Uber account.
The situation escalated after the driver offered Irwin-Cline a cigarette, which he suspects was laced with scopolamine — a powerful sedative known for its use in South American crimes.
“I passed out for what I assumed to be 20 to 30 minutes,” he recalled.
When he regained consciousness, he found himself injured on the side of a road in Golders Green, missing both his phone and memory of how he got there.
By the time he returned to his hostel, his laptop had been wiped, and his digital assets had vanished.
Screenshots provided to MyLondon show $73,000 worth of XRP and $50,000 in Bitcoin had been moved to various wallets.
He believes the stolen funds were funneled through exchanges like MEXC and BTSE, but without insurance or a court order, recovery remains unlikely.
The alleged robbery has been reported to the Metropolitan Police, Action Fraud, the FBI’s Virtual Assets Unit, and Uber. Authorities confirmed that an investigation is underway, but no arrests have been made.
The Metropolitan Police said the report was filed the same morning, with cryptocurrency theft estimated at $150,000.
Meanwhile, Irwin-Cline is staying in London to cooperate with authorities, though he holds little hope of recovering the stolen funds. “It’s virtually impossible to get that money back unless some weird miracle happens,” he said.
Crypto Crime Turns Violent as Illicit Transactions Top $40B in 2024
Illicit cryptocurrency activity surged to at least $40.9 billion in 2024, according to Chainalysis, with the number likely to grow as more criminal-linked wallets are identified.
Hacks alone accounted for $2.2 billion in stolen assets—a 21% increase from the previous year.
North Korean-linked groups, including Lazarus and Tradetraitor, were behind over 60% of those thefts, with major incidents like the $300 million hack of Japan’s DMM Bitcoin exchange among their hits.
But the threats go beyond online exploits. Criminal groups are using crypto to fund and conceal a wider range of crimes—from investment scams and AI-enhanced romance frauds to drug trafficking and even physical violence.
In one alarming case on May 13, 2025, the daughter and grandson of Paymium’s CEO were nearly kidnapped in Paris by masked men.
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