A Crown Heights resident lost $1,100 worth of the futuristic digital currency bitcoin in an old-fashioned stick-up last week, DNAinfo reports.
The man responded to a Craigslist offer to trade bitcoin for cash. He met the thief on May 27 at the corner of Troy Avenue and Crown Street, and got into a parked car with him under the pretense of finalizing the deal. A second man who had been waiting in the backseat then pulled out a gun and forced the victim to transfer the bitcoin into the thieves’ account. They then took his phone and fled.
This is a modern twist on the classic Brooklyn art of the strongarm, a style of theft that stubbornly refuses to die out. Crown Heights is gentrified enough that a guy with bitcoin lives there and feels comfortable enough to get into a car with a Craigslist stranger. The technology may be new, but the result is the same: jewels get run.
Amazingly, this isn’t even the first bitcoin mugging in New York: The Observer reported on a similar bitcoin robbery in which an FDNY firefighter had his shit took back in February, and a guy even got murdered over bitcoin in Queens in January.
(Image: Zach Copley)
