WonderFi’s CEO, Dean Skurka, was kidnapped and forced to pay $1 million in ransom for his freedom this week.
Dean Skurka, the chief executive officer (CEO) of WonderFi, a Toronto-based crypto firm, was kidnapped and made to pay $1 million in ransom, according to a CBC report from November 7. The executive was forced into a car in downtown Toronto and demanded to pay the $1 million, which he did “electronically.”
The police were called about the kidnapping incident and found Skurka uninjured in the city’s Centennial Park in the Etobicoke area. He has since confirmed with CBC that he is safe. He told the news outlet, “The safety and security of all of WonderFi’s employees are paramount,” Skurka mentioned via an email. “Client funds and data remain safe, and were not impacted by this incident.”
According to Jameson Lopp, the co-founder and chief security officer at cybersecurity firm Casa, this is the 171st incident of physical violence used to steal “bitcoins,” as per the CBC report.
“As the price goes up, more awareness of the space permeates throughout society and as a result, more criminally minded people decide they want to try to figure out what the ROI of executing a physical attack against a known crypto holder is,” he told CBC. “But you know, what I see in the space, is even a lot of high profile figures, I would say, do not have the level of security and privacy that they should to be commensurate with their risk profile.”
Another CEO Went Through the Same
A lot of these incidents are on the rise. Revpro Intel’s CEO Nick Drakon went through a similar unfortunate situation only a few months ago when a “sophisticated group” broke into his house and held him and his family at gunpoint. These individuals knew the exact amount Drakon held in his wallets and forced him to transfer considerable amounts, a majority of which were his personal funds.
“I was forced, at gunpoint, to log into a number of crypto accounts and transfer funds out,” he narrated in a now-deleted X post. The CEO was so shaken by the incident that he decided to step down from the position and hand it over to the company’s COO.
Such scary cases are not limited to crypto executives. In July, a foreign national was murdered in Ukraine by a group of four individuals who got the victim to transfer around 2.55 Bitcoin, worth $7 million at the time, before the horrific act. It goes to show how criminals are getting crypto-savvy to attack asset holders in real life and walk away with the proceeds.
