Police in Bali have arrested two foreigners accused of breaking into a villa and robbing the occupants of their cash and digital assets.
The victims, a married couple in Italy, were staying at a villa in Kuta. At around 3am on Dec. 11, the wife heard a loud bang and woke up to find her husband tied up by four masked robbers.
The robbers took the victims’ phones, including one that contained their bitcoin. They assaulted the husband as they demanded access to his crypto wallet, while threatening to hurt his wife.
“And if he didn’t tell them [the password], the perpetrators said they would kill the wife and held a knife against her neck. The victim then gave them the password to the phone,” Denpasar Police Chief Jansen Avitus Panjaitan said yesterday.
During the robbery, the victims recognized the voices of the two perpetrators, one being a fellow Italian national who worked for the husband, and the other an Englishman they had recently met at a house party.
The perpetrators eventually left, taking with them some IDR5.8 billion (US$406,639) in cash and bitcoin.
The couple reported the robbery to the Kuta Police. Following an investigation, officers from across precincts arrested the Italian and British suspects, while two more — a Polish man and a Russian man — are still on the run.
The suspects have been charged with violent robbery under the Criminal Code (KUHP), which carries a maximum punishment of 12 years in prison.
