British Soldier Faces Charges for Stealing Bitcoins and Assaulting Owners

A male British soldier has recently been charged in court on counts of kidnapping and robbery for allegedly stealing a couple’s bitcoins worth thousands of dollars.

The 36-year-old soldier identified as Greg Simpson along with three other accomplices were said to have broken into a holiday home in Bali, Indonesia, where an Italian couple, Principe Nerini, and his wife Camilla Guadagnuolo lodged in at the time.

According to a local police chief, the four men wore black clothes, covered their faces with scarves, and wore gloves to conceal their identities during the middle-of-the-night attack that happened on November 11, 2021.

The couple was allegedly threatened and physically assaulted by Simpson and the rest of the gang to reveal the password to their crypto wallet that contained bitcoins worth thousands of dollars.

Reports claim the robbers detained and threatened Guadagnuolo. They also bound Nerini in his hands and legs, threatened him with a knife, and then locked him in a bedroom after beating him.

After the robbers left, the couple were said to have checked their crypto wallet balance only to discover that 5.8 billion Indonesian Rupiahs (approximately $405K) worth of BTC had been transferred in three separate transactions to another account.

The couple might thus have revealed their wallet password to the robbers.

Reportedly, the recipient’s crypto account was owned by another member of the alleged assailants, namely Nicola Disanto, who was revealed to be a former employee of an export company operated by the assaulted victims.

Caught by The Long Arm of The Law

Less than twenty-four hours after the incident, two of the perpetrators, Simpson and Disanto, were said to have been arrested by the local police, with two knives, a jacket, a pair of trousers, and some cash found on them.

Although the remaining two members are still on the run and haven’t been found yet, the search for them continues.

Simpson and Disanto have recently been charged on counts of robbery, confinement, and threats.

If found guilty of these charges, the suspects could face up to nine years in prison.

Bitcoin Theft Involving Physical Assault, Not the First of its Kind

Last year, Zaryn Dentzel, the co-founder of a Spanish tech company, Tuenti, recounted the experience he claimed to have had with criminals who tried to rob him of his bitcoins worth millions of euros.

The criminals, Dentzel said, severely tortured him to extract the passwords of the electronic wallets that stored his cryptocurrencies, including bitcoins, that are worth “tens of millions” of euros.