Home-jacking crypto: they threaten to kill a pregnant woman's baby in England

Man is a wolf to man. A crypto investor beaten with a hammer for 45 minutes in his own living room. In December 2025, three masked men force their way into a house in Solihull, near Birmingham. His wife, seven months pregnant, is held on the couch with a pillow pressed over her face.

What the attackers want is in the husband's phone. The couple, who requested anonymity, recounted the scene ten months later. Did you think crypto kidnappings were a French specialty? Across the Channel, the mechanics are exactly the same.
Key points of this article:

• A cryptocurrency investor was violently attacked at home by three masked men seeking access to his digital funds.
• The attackers, guided by an accomplice on a video call, extorted several hundred thousand pounds in cryptocurrencies under the threat of extreme violence.

Crypto heist in Solihull: 45 minutes under hammer blows

The husband, whom the BBC calls James, first describes a door being forced open. "I see gloves coming in, balaclavas," he tells BBC journalist Joe Tidy in an article published on October 2, 2026. He tries to push back the intruders. They immediately hit him in the face, head, and ribs with a hammer.

On the couch, one of the men immobilizes his wife. "He puts a pillow over her face. He is literally suffocating her," remembers James, who hears her scream that she can’t breathe. The couple still doesn’t know what the attackers are looking for. The answer comes when one of them demands that James unlocks his phone and hands it over.

James will leave that night with multiple serious injuries to his head, hands, and ribs. His wife, a woman in her thirties expecting their third child, thought he was dead when he lay on the ground unresponsive. She also feared losing the baby due to the stress.

An accomplice on FaceTime to empty the crypto wallet

The three men seem to know that their victim holds cryptocurrencies. However, they do not know how to access them. A fourth accomplice guides them remotely via a video call on FaceTime. "Show me everything on his phone, show me his apps," James hears.

The tone changes when the man on the line spots a well-stocked wallet, the digital wallet that gives access to the cryptos. "If you don’t send this money now, we will stab your wife in the belly and kill your baby," James reports. He complies. Several hundred thousand pounds in cryptocurrencies are sent to the accomplice's wallet on video.

The gang also leaves with several Rolex watches. Before leaving the scene, the mastermind sets the distribution in front of James: 10,000 each for the executors, the rest for him. A driver was waiting outside, face uncovered. The baby, however, was born on time.

Wrench attacks: 2026 on track for a record year

The name comes from the wrench. No need to hack a wallet when you can force its owner to sign the transfer themselves, and once the funds are gone, the transaction is nearly irreversible. The criminals know this.

According to Chainalysis figures cited by the BBC, $30 million (£22.6 million) was stolen during violent thefts between January and June 2026. The year is set to become the worst ever recorded for this type of crime, with home burglaries also on the rise. France accounts for by far the largest number of attacks, partly due to a data leak in a tax service that may have allowed the location of wealthy holders.

For James, the toll is measured differently. An amateur investor since 2020, he had left his job in 2023 to trade full-time. He has lost everything. He is now looking to return to his former profession.

The major platforms, on the other hand, spend millions to protect their executives. Individuals like James have neither bodyguards nor safes. Ten months after the events, the police have not identified any of the three attackers, and Crimestoppers is offering £10,000 for any information.

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