Israeli mafia member and former LA police officer accused of kidnapping teenager to steal cryptocurrencies

Source: PortaldoBitcoin Original Title: Israeli mafia member and former LA police officer accused of kidnapping teenager in search of cryptocurrencies Original Link: The Los Angeles district attorney's office is accusing an Israeli citizen who is allegedly a member of the mafia and a former police officer of having kidnapped a teenager who possessed a large amount of cryptocurrencies.

The accused are Israeli Gabby Ben and former police officer Eric Halem. According to prosecutor Jane Brownstone, the duo led a group made up of four other men in the attempt to break into a luxury building in Koreatown, Los Angeles, last December to try to kidnap the teenager who was running a cryptocurrency business.

The group entered, found the young man's girlfriend, and decided to handcuff her while waiting for the teenager to arrive. Soon he arrived and was immobilized and coerced into granting access to his cryptocurrency wallets.

The victim tried to mislead the criminals by giving access to an empty wallet. The kidnappers then threatened to shoot the teenager in the foot and carry out a drowning torture.

The young man yielded and granted access to a safe that contained a cryptocurrency wallet stored on a USB drive. The wallet had $350,000 in cryptocurrencies.

The press reports that Ben, 51 years old, has already been convicted twice for fraud and deported to Israel. In addition, the prosecutor said that he has “ties to the Israeli mafia”.

The other alleged leader of the operation was Halem, 38, who was a police officer with the Los Angeles Department for 13 years, having left the force in 2022.

The police presented as evidence videos from surveillance cameras in which the accused can be seen breaking into the victim's apartment and leaving after 25 minutes.

It appears that the defense strategy involves not denying the crime, but distancing the thesis that they were leaders. Halem's lawyer claims that the violent acts were conceived and carried out by a member of the group who was seen as the most violent.