According to the information, the 24-year-old American, who abused drugs such as benzodiazepines, Adderall and cocaine, decided to apply the "$5 wrench attack", given his father's refusal to sell the bitcoins. It is known as a “$5 wrench attack” when the criminal physically attacks or threatens the victim to hand over access to their cryptocurrencies.
The young man had convinced his father to invest in Bitcoin, so he decided to create a joint account with his son for USD 100,000 in an exchange. Thanks to the bitcoin bull run in 2017, they managed to collect profits of USD 350 thousand in 2018. However, the father decided to block his son's access to the funds and establish two-step authentication, when his problems with the drugs got worse.
The young man was "obsessed" with selling the bitcoins once the price drop in 2018 continued, according to the father told the American media. "No, you have to stop using drugs," he told his son.
In response, the young man, named Liam Ghershony, planned to break into his father's mobile phone and use two-step authentication to access the bitcoin account, adding benzodiazepine to his tea. Once he achieved his goal, he transferred the holdings to an account under his control and converted two-thirds of the bitcoins to ether (the Ethereum token).
But the amount of drugs used by Ghershony in the attack endangered the life of her father, who spent two days passed out in his apartment before being found by police. The man was hospitalized for four days to recover from "severe dehydration and acute organ dysfunction."
Ghershony was sentenced to a 20-year "suspended sentence." In addition, he had to spend 125 days in prison and undergo a drug and mental health rehabilitation program. “I will carry that with me: the guilt and the shame. And I want to embrace that as I launch into recovery," he said.
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