New data came to light last week about a family in British Columbia who went through a terrifying 13-hour home invasion in 2024. A group of masked attackers beat, waterboarded, and threatened them while stealing about $2 million in bitcoin.

The identity of the family was not made public.

In November, the Provincial Court of British Columbia sentenced a Hong Kong man involved in the crime, 35-year-old Tsz Wing Boaz Chan, to seven years in prison for his role in what a judge called an “elaborately planned” and extremely violent crime.

The attack happened on April 27, 2024, when two men dressed as Canada Post workers knocked on the family’s door in Port Moody. When the wife opened the door, the men forced their way in. Two more attackers followed, and the family (a husband, wife, and their teenage daughter) was tied up with zip ties.

From that moment, the violence escalated. Court documents say the intruders beat the family, threatened to kill them, and waterboarded both parents. They demanded passwords to the husband’s digital asset accounts.

Judge Robin McQuillan noted the “extreme violence over a very long period, with enormous financial consequences, on top of the profound emotional impact it will continue to have on the victims.”

The attackers covered their faces, spoke in English, Mandarin, and Cantonese, and called each other by numbers instead of names as “One,” “Two,” “Three,” and “Four.” A fifth person gave orders over the phone using a voice filter so he couldn’t be identified.

The father later said he felt close to death during the waterboarding sessions. The judge wrote that “each time he felt that he was taken to the edge of death.” The mother was also waterboarded, and at one point, the husband was forced to watch while helplessly tied down.

The attackers also targeted the couple’s daughter. They forced her to undress, filmed her, and threatened to post the videos online. In some cases, they told her to make noises that would convince her father she was being assaulted. These threats were used to pressure the parents into giving up account information.

At first, the group demanded 200 bitcoin, worth about $26 million at the time. When the father explained he did not have that much (saying he had exaggerated his past Bitcoin success online), they lowered the demand to 100 bitcoin. In the end, they withdrew 30 BTC, worth about $1.6 million at the time, draining the family’s accounts.

Investigators later said the family was likely targeted because the father had been known in the local Chinese community for boasting about his “cryptocurrency success.” As McQuillan wrote, the man had “boasted and exaggerated about his success with cryptocurrency investments.”

This type of crime is known as a “wrench attack,” where criminals use physical violence to steal digital assets.

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Around 8 a.m. the next morning, the daughter managed to free herself and escape through a back door. She ran to a neighbor’s house and called 911. Police arrived soon after and found the parents still tied up and injured.

Officers recovered weapons, phones, gloves, masks, and several surveillance cameras from the home. They learned that the attackers had placed cameras outside and watched the family for the days before the heist.

Chan had arrived in Canada weeks earlier from Hong Kong. Police linked him to the crime using DNA and CCTV footage showing him in a rented Honda Odyssey near the home. He had flown back to Hong Kong before police identified him, but he was arrested when he returned to Canada in July 2024.

Chan was paid about CA$50,000 for his involvement, per CBC. Judge Robin McQuillan said the crime was “elaborately planned” and highlighted the severe emotional and financial damage done to the victims. The daughter said she no longer feels safe at home, and the father said the stolen bitcoin represented “decades of hard work.”

With credit for time already served, Chan still faces more than five more years in prison. The other attackers have not been caught, and the investigation is ongoing.

Experts say violent digital-asset-related crimes like this are becoming more common worldwide. Reports show that the number of these wrench attacks has more than doubled this year, making bitcoin investors increasingly vulnerable.

TRMLabs, a blockchain investigations and risk management company that helps organizations detect and investigate financial crime related to digital assets, recently released a report saying wrench attacks and “crypto-related Violent crime” are on the rise.