Walter Moss and his wife were enjoying a quiet morning at home in North Carolina — the kind of leisurely weekday that retirement promises. Nothing could have prepared them for what was about to happen.
There was a knock at the door. Walter opened it to find two maintenance workers who told him they needed to check a suspected leak in his backyard. He let them in and went back to bed.
A few minutes later, there was another knock. Walter's wife opened the door — and the two "maintenance workers" lunged at her, dragged her into the kitchen, and beat her.
When Walter ran to help, the intruders seized him, beat him severely, and threatened him: hand over all his crypto, or things would get much worse. The helpless man was forced to open his Coinbase account and watch as more than $150,000 in savings vanished before his eyes. The robbers were on a live phone call with a hacker who was remotely controlling the computer and executing the transfers in real time.
The nightmare ended only when landscapers appeared in the backyard and the intruders fled.
---
Physical robbery is an archaic technique, one that had nearly disappeared. It is far easier to drain someone's bank account from the other side of the world through a cyberattack. But the steady improvement of cybersecurity — combined with the shift toward hardware crypto wallets that are never connected to the internet — has brought physical robbery back as an effective method that bypasses virtually every cyber defense imaginable.
This case is not an isolated one. Since 2020, more than 200 documented incidents of physical crypto robbery have occurred, and in 2025 the number of cases has nearly doubled compared to 2024.
Victims are identified through crypto account email addresses that have leaked online; attackers then investigate those email accounts to trace the owners and their physical addresses. This part is carried out by young hackers in Europe, who then direct local criminals in the United States to execute the break-in and help complete the process in exchange for a cut of the proceeds.
---
This particular incident took place in 2023 and ended on a relatively positive note. The criminal crew was caught and sentenced to lengthy prison terms. The European hackers who assisted them were also apprehended, and an extradition request to the United States is under review. Coinbase compensated the couple for the stolen funds — noting that it was not obligated to cover physical robbery, but chose to act beyond the letter of the law because the couple had been paying subscribers to a cyber-theft protection service.
Other victims have been far less fortunate, left with neither their money nor their peace of mind — only lifelong trauma.
---
Light and darkness will always be locked in struggle, and as defenses improve, so too will the methods used to circumvent them. It is the duty of the law to take this seriously — to adapt enforcement tools and operational approaches in order to close these gaps as early as possible.
*Pictured: a CYPHEROCK hardware crypto wallet.*
---
👋 Hi, I'm Shlomo Strauss — follow me for more content on science and technology.