North Wales Police are investigating a sophisticated phishing scam where criminals posing as senior UK law enforcement officers stole £2.1 million ($2.8 million) in Bitcoin from a cold storage holder through an elaborate social engineering scheme.
The victim was contacted by a scammer claiming to have arrested an individual whose phone contained the victim’s personal identification documents, creating urgency through fabricated security breach fears.
Source: Facebook/NWPThe attacker instructed the victim to “secure their assets” by logging into their cold storage device via a malicious link, leading them to enter their seed phrase into a fake website. The scammers immediately accessed the victim’s wallet and withdrew all assets.
The incident joins a growing wave of crypto-related crimes targeting both digital assets and their holders physically.
This sophisticated approach mirrors criminal patterns seen throughout 2025, where crypto investors have lost more than $2.2 billion to hacks, scams, and security breaches across 344 incidents during the first half alone.
Phishing attacks accounted for over $410 million in losses across 132 separate incidents, making social engineering the second most expensive attack vector after wallet compromises.
Law Enforcement Corruption Enables Inside Crypto Crimes
The crypto industry faces threats not only from external scammers but also from corrupt law enforcement officials exploiting their positions for criminal gain.
Last month, former National Crime Agency officer Paul Chowles received a five-and-a-half-year prison sentence for stealing 50 Bitcoins worth £4.4 million from evidence seized during a Silk Road investigation.
Chowles transferred the cryptocurrency from Thomas White’s “retirement wallet” to public addresses before laundering the funds through Bitcoin Fog mixing service.
He converted the stolen Bitcoin to pounds sterling and spent the proceeds using Cryptopay and Wirex debit cards over several years, making 279 transactions totaling £23,309.
The theft remained undetected for years until White noticed unauthorized transfers and informed police that only someone within the NCA could have accessed his crypto wallet.
Notebooks found in Chowles’ office contained usernames, passwords, and statements relating to White’s crypto accounts, providing evidence of systematic theft.
Similarly, two Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department deputies admitted to using law enforcement powers to help crypto entrepreneur Adam Iza extort victims through armed confrontations and fraudulent search warrants.
Deputies David Anthony Rodriguez and Christopher Michael Cadman received substantial cash payments for harassment services, with Iza paying as much as $280,000 monthly to deputies he called his “pawns.”
The corruption cases extended to staged arrests and armed extortion, with victims forced to transfer $25,000 immediately after gunpoint confrontations.
Rodriguez obtained fraudulent search warrants by lying to judges about investigating robberies while actually seeking GPS tracking data for private clients.
Violent Physical Attacks Escalate Across Europe and Beyond
Physical violence against crypto holders reached alarming levels in 2025, with at least 32 “wrench attacks” reported globally, putting the year on pace to exceed 2021’s record of 36 violent incidents.
Nearly one-third of these attacks occurred in France, where criminals increasingly target family members through kidnapping and mutilation attempts.
Ledger co-founder David Balland was kidnapped alongside his wife in January, with attackers severing one of his fingers before demanding a crypto ransom. The couple was held captive at separate locations for 48 hours before their release.
In May, a crypto entrepreneur’s father was also abducted by four men disguised as delivery workers using a stolen UPS van.
The kidnappers severed one of the victim’s fingers and demanded €5-7 million ransom before police rescued him during a raid in Palaiseau.
French authorities arrested more than a dozen suspects in coordinated raids across Paris, Suresnes, and Loire-Atlantique, believing multiple attacks were orchestrated by the same criminal network using social media platforms to recruit operatives.
The pattern included delivery vehicles, daytime operations, and systematic targeting of crypto-affiliated families.
Physical attacks spread beyond France, including the attempted kidnapping of a crypto executive’s daughter and two-year-old child in central Paris, where three masked assailants leaped from a postal delivery van before being fought off by the child’s father.
The escalation prompted increased demand for private protection services as crypto-related violence enters what security experts describe as a “darker, more personal phase.”
Amsterdam-based firm Infinite Risks International reported surging demand for close protection services from clients citing fears of kidnapping, extortion, and ransom attempts targeting themselves and their families.
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