A group of Israeli holidaymakers lost $700,000 worth of Bitcoin to robbers on a beach in Puntarenas, Costa Rica, local news agency, Teletica, reports. The 11 Israeli nationals were attending a social event on Santa Teresa de Cóbano beach when they were reportedly violently attacked by eight unidentified men driving two top-of-the-range vehicles.
According to Costa Rica’s Organismo de Investigación Judicial (OIJ), a court-affiliated public body responsible for criminal investigations, the eight men approached the Israelis, overpowered a security guard, and “gagged and forced them to hand over their belongings.” The attackers also demanded that the Israeli tourists hand over $700,000 in Bitcoin.
The report does not say exactly how the BTC was moved from the wallet of the victims into the hands of the attackers. Authorities in Costa Rica believe that the people who stole from the eleven Israeli citizens had some form of police training, per the Teletica report.
Security camera footage appears to show some of the robbers wearing police uniforms and shirts, the report alleges, moving the victims from one place to another. The OIJ suspects that the attackers were tipped off by someone close to the Israelis, who knew their involvement with BTC. The agency suggested that the robbery might have been an inside job.
11 Israelis visiting Costa Rica were attacked by 8 men who overpowered their security guard and robbed them of $700,000 worth of bitcoin. Analysis of surveillance footage leads investigators to suspect the robbers are current or former police.https://t.co/f09114S8e6
— Jameson Lopp (@lopp) August 9, 2024
The incident comes just one week after a Morrocan man was murdered for his Bitcoin in Ukraine. Police said the 29-year-old was beaten and dragged into a car near his home in Solomianskyi, a district in Kyiv.
The assailants demanded he transfer the equivalent of $170,000 in BTC into their wallets before strangling him to death. The four men have since been arrested on allegations of abduction and murder.
If the Costa Rican Bitcoin theft turn out to have the police as an accomplice, as suspected by the OIJ, it would not be the first time that law enforcement details have done so. In 2021, two police officers were arrested in the Vietnamese capital of Ho Chi Minh City on allegations of orchestrating a fake accident and stealing $1.63 million in Bitcoin from a businessman.
