In brief
- A 74-year-old man disappeared in May after leaving home without his phone.
- Authorities believe the disappearance is linked to the man’s family’s crypto fortune. They’ve found evidence of fraudulent activity and impersonation of him to communicate with family members.
- The man’s son, a hedge fund executive, believes someone stole his father’s identity and drained over $1 million from his accounts.
Naiping Hou, 74, left home on a Monday without his phone and never came back. Local law enforcement believes the disappearance is linked to his family’s crypto holdings.
Days later, his silver Toyota Yaris was found abandoned near a hiking trail in Rancho Cucamonga.
He was declared missing on May 4 and sheriff’s deputies now suspect Hou may have been kidnapped.
By July 7, the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department confirmed its Specialized Investigations Division is investigating Hou’s disappearance as “suspicious,” finding evidence of “extensive fraudulent activity” related to his bank accounts.
An unnamed suspect allegedly used Hou’s phone and “impersonated him to communicate with family members,” the Sheriff’s Department statement reads. While no suspects have been named in the case, investigators have not yet ruled out foul play.
Hou’s son, Wen Hou, has offered a $250,000 reward for information leading to his father’s safe return. He believes someone stole his father’s identity and drained his accounts of over $1 million.
Wen, who made a fortune in crypto and has been CIO of investment firm and hedge fund Coincident Capital since 2019, said his father had no reason to disappear.
“I miss him a lot,” he told local media. “He’s sort of a guide to my life,” he said in an interview with KABC.
Still, wealthy crypto users often make themselves targets by “flaunting wealth online, neglecting online privacy/security, or trusting insiders,” CryptoCare’s Harris said.
Poor security habits, along with the “misconception that crypto is fully anonymous, despite traceable blockchains,” heighten a person’s vulnerability, he added.
Snir Levi, founder and CEO of compliance and threat management platform Nominis, argues many victims unknowingly expose themselves via social media, leaked data, or wallet activity, making them easy targets for threats.
“Unfortunately, even today, people don’t understand that everything they post on social media can expose their location and crypto wealth,” he told Decrypt.
Beyond individual behavior, platforms such as crypto exchanges bear responsibility for protecting users, especially when leaked data can tie identities to wallet addresses, Levi opined.
Exchanges need to protect user privacy and treat their users’ data “with the same caution they treat crypto assets,” Levi said.
Hou’s disappearance reflects a broader pattern of physical threats tied to digital asset.
A worrying trend
The trend has been dubbed as “wrench attacks” in the crypto industry, with the term used to describe how an often low-level theft can turn violent when attackers use force to extract information from victims.
There’s a marked increase in cases of “kidnapping, threatening and holding people in order to get their seed phrase or to steal their money,” Levi said.
That observation is echoed by Nick Harris, founder of blockchain forensics and asset recovery firm CryptoCare. Harris told Decrypt that attacks of this nature are “definitely on the rise,” citing 22 cases reported globally, halfway through the year.
Police and other authorities now deploy “cybercrime units and blockchain forensic teams” to trace transactions for ongoing investigations, Harris said.
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