How crypto criminals stole $700 million from people - often using age-old tricks
8 hours ago Share Save Joe Tidy World Service Cyber Correspondent Share Save
BBC
There's something uniquely agonising about having your cryptocurrency stolen. All transactions are recorded on a digital ledger, known as a blockchain, so even if someone takes your money and puts it in their own crypto wallet, it is still visible online. "You can see your money there on the public blockchain, but there's nothing you can do to get it back," says Helen, who lost around $315,000 (£250,000) to thieves. She likens it to watching a burglar pile up your prized possessions on the other side of an impassable chasm. For seven years Helen and her husband Richard (not his real name), both UK residents, had been buying and stacking up crypto coins called Cardano. They liked the idea of investing in a digital asset that had the potential to rise dramatically in value, unlike funds saved in more conventional ways. They knew it was riskier, but they were careful to keep their digital keys safe. But somehow hackers got into their cloud storage account, where they kept information about their crypto wallets and how to access them.
Bloomberg via Getty Images Helen and Richard are not wealthy. She is a personal assistant, he is a composer, and they had high hopes for their Cardano investments - before the theft
In February 2024, after a small test transfer, the criminals sent all the couple's coins to their own digital wallets in a swift and silent attack. The couple then watched for months as their money was moved from one wallet to another, powerless to do anything. (The inherent contradiction with crypto currency is that all transactions are publicly trackable but users can be publicly untraceable if they choose.) Helen and Richard are not wealthy. She is a personal assistant, he is a composer, and they had high hopes for their Cardano investments. "We'd been buying these coins for so long... We used every scrap of money we could find to buy more," says Richard. "Aside from my parents' deaths, this theft is the worst thing to happen to me." Ever since, Helen has been on a mission to recover their money. She obtained detailed reports from various police forces and the Cardano developers. Now, even though she has the wallet address of the criminals, there is nothing anyone can do to unmask them. Their plan is to save up enough to engage private investigators to try to trace the hackers. "It leaves you with a feeling of helplessness," she says, "but I am going to keep trying."
An explosion in crypto crime
A survey carried out for the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) in August 2024, suggested that approximately 12% of British adults owned crypto-assets - equivalent to about seven million people. Globally, it has been estimated that 560 million people are now crypto owners. But as ownership rose, so did theft. The pandemic ushered in a surge in the value of crypto coins and with it an explosion in attacks on the industry. And 2025 was another bumper year for crypto criminals, with total thefts standing at more than $3.4bn (£2.5bn), according to investigators at blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis. The annual figure has remained in the same ballpark since 2020.
Getty Images A survey suggested around 12% of British adults, roughly seven million people, have owned crypto-assets
Most of the money is being stolen in massive cyber attacks on crypto companies. For example, North Korean hackers swiped $1.5bn (£1.1bn) from crypto exchange Bybit in February 2025. The losses in this case and the vast majority of others are covered by the deep-pocketed crypto firms, with little impact on individuals. But 2025 also saw an increase in the number of attacks on individual crypto investors. Chainalysis research says these individual attacks rose from 40,000 in 2022 to 80,000 last year. Hacking, scamming or coercing of individuals accounted for an estimated 20% of all crypto value stolen - estimated at $713m (£532m). But the company adds that the number could be far higher as not all victims will choose to report thefts publicly. When this happens, you could be left on your own.
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