Florida Man Robbed Trying To Buy Bitcoin

While computer breaches and malicious emails are commonplace online, when it comes to bitcoin, it can also be dangerous offline in the real world.

According to a report, a man in Florida was allegedly robbed at knifepoint while trying to sell $28,000 in bitcoin. The 32-year-old resident of Lake Worth, Florida, Steve Manos, set up a meeting with two people in West Palm Beach to sell the bitcoin for cash. Manos, who said he had met with the two individuals in the past, gave them $28,000 in cash, but instead of getting the digital currency, the two took off with the money. Law enforcement was able to arrest Andre Allen, a 34-year-old that allegedly stole the cash after Manos gave police the phone number he used to set up the meeting. Allen was later identified by Manos in a police lineup.

This isn’t the first time that a physical robbery has occurred when someone was trying to either buy or sell bitcoin outside of the internet. Last summer, a New York resident was robbed at gunpoint of more than $1,000 in bitcoin, and in 2014, a Tampa man was robbed of about $35,000 in bitcoin by a former employee.

The crimes surrounding bitcoin aren’t only robberies between people trying to buy and sell bitcoin; it has also happened on the so-called Dark Web. Earlier this summer, a court case revealed in documents that two men allegedly stole 5,400 bitcoin from an underground illegal online drug site called Sheep Marketplace. At the time, the price of bitcoin was higher than $1,100, which means the dollar value of the bitcoin was $6.6 million. The government has seized $4.5 million from two Florida men who were allegedly involved in the case. This theft, which occurred in 2013, caused the Sheep Marketplace to close down.