Quick Summary
Victim: Jacob Irwin-Cline, 30 ex-software developer of the state of Oregon.
Occurred Date: Early morning of 9/05/2025.
Place: In London, having left The Roxy nightclub in Soho.
Crime: Kidnapped, drugged with supposed scopolamine and robbed of crypto amounting to $123,000.
Assets Missing: 73 thousand XRP and 50 thousand Bitcoin.
Accused Arsenals: MEXC and BTSE in laundering the stolen crypto.
Status: The report is filed, and the investigation is still in process engaging UK and US authorities.
Bigger Trend: The cryptocurrency-related crimes surpassed 40.9 billions in 2024.
Kidnapped Following a Night on the Town
It began with a regular night out in London, but ended up being a crypto horror story to Jacob Irwin-Cline. When he left The Roxy nightclub located in Soho, he had been approached by a driver who called out the name to him via his Uber app. And he went into the vehicle, believing that it was the right connection, little did he know that he was stepping into a well-concealed trap.
Drugged and Dumped
In the car, the driver handed him a cigarette, which Irwin-Cline believes could have been spiked with scopolamine, a harmful tranquilizer widely employed in crimes in South America.
“I lost consciousness and thought it was 20 to 30 minutes,” Irwin-Cline told MyLondon.
His memory is wiped, and he wakes up battered at the side of the road in Golders Green without his phone. His laptop was now clean, but when he arrived back at his hostel it got even worse as digital assets over the amount of $123,000, consisting of some 73K XRP and 50K Bitcoin, was now missing out of his crypto wallets.
Crypto Heist Gets Global
Irwin-Cline opined that the perpetrator laundered the stolen money by using cryptocurrency exchanges such as MEXC and BTSE to such an extent that it will be hard to recover without a court order or a cyber insurance policy. No arrests have been made even though the incidence was reported to the Metropolitan Police, Action Fraud, and Uber, as well as the FBI, whose Virtual Assets Unit is also aware of the incidence.
“Admittedly, it would be almost impossible to get that cash back except if some strange miracle occurs.”
Red Flag of an Even Bigger Problem
This shocking development is included in a series of crimes related to cryptocurrencies that reached $40.9 billion in 2024, as the data provided by Chainalysis indicates. Offline heists are on the rise even though online hacks are also a major concern as in the case of the DMM Bit coin exchange in Japan whose hack resulted in a loss of $300 million.
In a truly chilling May 13 story, masked males tried to kidnap the daughter and grand son of the CEO of Paymium in Paris, a truly bring on the frightening mutation of crypto-related crime.
Final Thoughts
The case of Irwin-Cline gives a bleak impression that the dangers associated with digital assets go way beyond the screen. Now that crypto is going mainstream, all users should be careful; both on the internet and in person.