Crypto thieves in London are stealing phones to drain wallets, often within hours

Crypto users in London are getting cleaned out not by hackers in hoodies or some offshore scammer, but by guys on foot, right on the street, in ￰0￱ just need your phone, and once they’ve got it, your whole wallet is gone, no matter how secure you thought it ￰1￱ to the Financial Times, a guy called Christian d’Ippolito was heading home in the early hours near Old Street when four men approached ￰2￱ of the men snatched his phone and jumped into a getaway ￰3￱ was the start, but within hours, his crypto wallet was drained, nearly £40,000 ￰4￱ drain crypto wallets while police fall behind “It felt completely out of my control,” Christian said, adding that the theft made him question whether he should even keep doing his charity ￰5￱ his case wasn’t ￰6￱ kinds of thefts are happening more and more across London, and the cops can’t keep ￰7￱ people store almost every detail of their identity on their phones; passport photos, passwords, and two-factor ￰8￱ moment of distraction on the street and a thief has your phone, your crypto, your ￰9￱ Pounder, a guy who used to work for the Met Police, now he works at Token Recovery, helping people who’ve had their crypto ￰10￱ said robbers are aggressively betting on the odds that the average young guy out late in London probably owns ￰11￱ according to their data, one in four people between 18 and 34 in the UK own some ￰12￱ are three times more likely than women to have it.

That’s who these thieves are ￰13￱ Kotak, another victim, said he was also walking home after a night out when a group of men stopped him. “They seemed pretty friendly, we were just talking,” he ￰14￱ of them asked for his number. “I logged ￰15￱ that point, they just grabbed my phone.” He lost £10,000 from his Coinbase and Binance ￰16￱ bank accounts were ￰17￱ tried to disable the phone using a friend’s device, but he couldn’t remember his Apple ￰18￱ the time he figured it out, his crypto was already being ￰19￱ with Christian, who said the robbers managed to reset his entire Apple ID. “I don’t know how they worked around this,” he ￰20￱ he’s no ￰21￱ used to promote a crypto platform based in Singapore and had biometric security set up for every ￰22￱ get refunds but cops make no progress Surprisingly, Neil and another victim, Alec Burns, were reimbursed by Coinbase without any ￰23￱ pointed to its terms and said they aren’t liable for lost ￰24￱ that’s all they said.

Neil’s stolen Binance funds haven’t been ￰25￱ said he hasn’t heard anything back from the ￰26￱ Ariss, who used to work for the City of London Police and now works at blockchain intelligence firm TRM Labs, said the idea that stolen crypto can’t be tracked is just false. “When they do investigate crypto theft, they investigate it exceptionally well,” he ￰27￱ sells software that helps police trace blockchain ￰28￱ most of the time, no one investigates at ￰29￱ said criminals usually cash out quickly through physical ￰30￱ at the high end, there are ways to hide the ￰31￱ pointed to the $1.5 billion stolen by North Korean hackers from a Dubai-based exchange.

A chunk of that has already been cashed ￰32￱ in London, Alec says the cops haven’t done a ￰33￱ lost around $40,000 in ￰34￱ said the wallets used to move his stolen funds are linked to known ￰35￱ that didn’t help. “After all that’s happened, I can understand why so many people move to places like Dubai,” Alec said on his podcast, Untangling Web3, adding that he thinks the robbers are either waiting for better ways to move the crypto or for him to stop watching. “In 10 years, I probably won’t be watching that account,” he said. Scott, the ex-cop, said he’s reported 20 crypto thefts to Action Fraud, the UK’s official reporting center for ￰36￱ of the cases were picked up by the ￰37￱ Police put out general advice: enable anti-theft features on phones, use strong passwords for every app, and always keep an eye on your screen in ￰38￱ Labs runs chainabuse.

com, where people can report stolen crypto so it can be flagged and possibly blocked from being cashed ￰39￱ smartest crypto minds already read our ￰40￱ in? Join them .