She wouldn’t give up the password and, according to prosecutors, was so demoralized by the earlier theft of most of her funds in a break-in that she told the men to simply shoot her. Instead, they stole her engagement ring, two iPhones, a laptop, a charger for a neurostimulator used by another household member to treat Parkinson’s disease, and any cash they could find before leaving.
In the case of another victim, prosecutors describe how the group targeted a man whom Seemungal knew was a SIM swapping hacker and who he believed had actually robbed him of a significant sum of cryptocurrency in 2021. To prepare for this heist in September 2022, they began repeatedly sending their target pizza deliveries in hopes of getting him to come to their door without suspicion. However, when the time for the planned robbery arrived, their target was not at the house, so instead they waited and then pulled a gun on their target when he arrived at the house.
Over the next hour, the group tied the victim’s hands behind his back with shoelaces and demanded that he give up access to his cryptocurrency accounts. When the account he gave them access to only had a petite amount of cryptocurrency, they put him in the backseat of a rented Cadillac, hit him in the face with a gun, drove away, and began extorting cryptocurrency payments from his friends and father. Finally, about 120 miles from the victim’s home, the men pulled her from the car and ordered her to kneel. Instead, she fled when one of the men fired a shot from a moving car, although it is unclear whether the shot was intended to hit the victim or simply scare him. One member of the group — who has not yet been charged — later said St. Felix suggested that they kill their captive.
Months later, prosecutors say, the group carried out another attack on another victim they believed to be a wealthy cryptocurrency hacker, this time in Texas. While driving from Florida to begin tracking the target, St. Felix fled law enforcement in Louisiana, flipped his car at more than 90 miles per hour and broke his leg. The remaining members of the Florida crew were arrested after that crash, so the hack was carried out by a newly recruited team based in the Houston area.
Just days before Christmas 2022, a Texas-based group broke into their target’s home, tied his family members’ hands with zip ties, and repeatedly punched him in the face, demanding access to their cryptocurrency. Prosecutors say they put knives and forks under his mother’s fingernails and then hit her in the face with a gun. They burned their victim’s arm with a warm iron to force him to hand over his crypto account details, and at one point tried to hit him in the genitals.
The victim eventually told her captors that she had buried the device storing her cryptocurrency in the backyard. (In fact, this hardware wallet, containing $1.4 million worth of cryptocurrencies, was in a moving box in the house that the thieves never found). When the thieves led their victim into the yard to locate the device, he climbed a fence and fled. The burglars stole $150,000 in cash and some jewelry before fleeing.
One last job
In early 2023, after those relatively unsuccessful extortion attempts, Seemungal’s associate allegedly began feeding the group tips by hacking into potential targets’ email addresses to see how much of their cryptocurrency holdings they had and sending those tips to the home invasion team. One Telegram chat obtained by prosecutors shows discussions about potential targets, including someone with $1.2 million in Texas and another with $600,000 in Tennessee.