Hugo Hyung-soo Lee, CEO of Haru Invest, a South Korean crypto investment and trading platform, was stabbed multiple times in the neck during a court hearing in Seoul. Lee was being tried alongside other company executives accused of stealing digital assets from 16,000 users, totaling approximately $826 million. The attacker, a man in his 40s, was allegedly a victim of the alleged crypto theft. He reportedly jumped from his seat during the trial and stabbed Lee with a knife. Lee was injured but survived the attack. The accusations against Haru Invest arose after the company halted withdrawals on June 13, 2023. Delio, a similar company that had entrusted some of its clients’ funds to Haru Invest, also stopped withdrawals the next day. Prosecutors claim that Haru Invest executives misappropriated funds and misled investors about the company’s financial stability. The attack comes just weeks after a Chinese gang robbed over $2 million in digital assets at gunpoint from a luxury villa in Thailand, forcing the victim to transfer the cryptocurrency. While cyberattacks, phishing scams, and exploiting vulnerabilities have dominated discussions about crypto fraud, there is a growing trend of physical violence against cryptocurrency holders. In July, four men kidnapped and murdered a foreign national in Kyiv, Ukraine, who was known to own Bitcoin. The attackers forced the victim to transfer 3 Bitcoins to their wallets before suffocating him. In London on June 17, three men armed with machetes broke into a house, where they forced the homeowner to transfer approximately 1,000 Ethereum (ETH) tokens worth $2.5 million. These incidents highlight the increasing danger faced by cryptocurrency holders, with physical violence becoming a new weapon in the world of digital asset crime.
