Hong Kong authorities have captured three teenagers and rescued a 19-year-old who was the victim of a horrific ordeal involving assault and illegal detention last month.
Police are actively searching for the remaining six individuals – including four men and two women – suspected of being involved.
Hong Kong teenager attacked over crypto profits
According to a report by SCMP, the victim was lured under the guise of meeting people and trading crypto assets. However, upon arriving at a room at the Harbor Grand Kowloon Hotel on Tak Fung Street, the suspects demanded HK$180,000 (worth around $23,000) in profits from trading cryptocurrencies.
The victim was then threatened and brutally attacked with a baseball bat by two of the nine suspects present at the scene.
The victim, aged 19, managed to alert a friend, who then notified the police. Six suspects linked to the case fled the scene, but police were able to arrest two of them outside the hotel. Another was arrested on the premises.
An insider was quoted as saying:
“The victim was reportedly arrested when he went there to meet the nine suspects – seven men and two women. The group demanded that he pay HK$180,000 in profits from trading virtual currencies.
The arrested people, aged 16 to 19, face charges including assault, illegal detention and blackmail, according to detectives from the Kowloon City Anti-Triad Team handling the case.
Hong Kong authorities have witnessed a notable increase in digital asset crimes in Hong Kong over the past three years. Reported cases increased from 1,397 to 3,415, with the corresponding amounts increasing from HKD 824 million to HKD 4.398 billion, indicating that incidents almost tripled during this period.
Crypto crime wave
Crypto crimes have also wreaked havoc across the globe. Last May, six individuals confronted accusations of kidnapping, torture and extortion of a man from Maharashtra, India, who failed to make a profit on his crypto investment. The victim claimed that the accused forcibly entered into a sale deed of her apartment in order to recover money, transferring the property into their name.
In South Korea, Lee Kyung-woo, former spy turned hitman received a life sentence in October for kidnapping a woman from an upscale Seoul neighborhood amid a crypto dispute and then administering a lethal dose of ketamine obtained at a plastic surgery clinic.
The couple, having suffered losses of at least 1 billion Korean won ($760,000) in crypto investments, hired Lee, who allegedly posed as a former undercover agent, to eliminate the woman who encouraged their investment and steal his digital assets.
In another alarming case, a 23-year-old cryptocurrency miner was removed in front of his residence in Izhevsk, Russia, on Christmas Day. The kidnappers transported him to an undisclosed location, then contacted his brother via Telegram, demanding more than 15 million rubles for his release. They allegedly threatened to charge the victim with drug possession and turn her over to authorities if their demands were not met.
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