A former Los Angeles police officer has been sentenced to life plus 15 years in state prison for a 2024 home invasion in Koreatown in which prosecutors said a teenager was forced to hand over a hard drive containing about $350,000 in Bitcoin.
The sentence was announced as federal prosecutors in Connecticut unveiled a separate case involving three Missouri men accused of helping plan an attempted Bitcoin-related robbery. Together, the matters point to continued law enforcement focus on violent crimes tied to digital assets.
Life sentence in Koreatown robbery case
Eric Halem, 38, a former LAPD officer and 13-year veteran of the department, was convicted of kidnapping and robbery after a two-week trial. He was sentenced on August 4 to life plus 15 years in state prison.
The underlying crime took place in the early morning of December 28, 2024, at a high-rise apartment in Koreatown. According to prosecutors, Halem and three co-conspirators posed as police officers executing a search warrant at the 18th-floor residence.
Authorities said the group coerced a 17-year-old victim into surrendering a hard drive that held roughly $350,000 worth of Bitcoin. The case stands out because the robbery allegedly relied on the appearance of official police authority to seize a digital asset holding.
Federal indictment in Connecticut
In a separate matter also announced on August 4, US Attorney David X. Sullivan for the District of Connecticut said three Missouri men had been indicted over their alleged roles in an attempted Bitcoin robbery scheme.
Court documents and statements made in court link that indictment to an earlier incident on August 25, 2024, when Danbury Police arrested six Florida men after what authorities described as a violent carjacking, beating, and kidnapping of two vehicle occupants.
Investigators later determined that the kidnapping victims were the parents of a person involved in the theft of hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Bitcoin. Prosecutors allege that Sedric Louis, 32, John Davis, 34, and Martel Williams, 27, all from St. Louis, were recruited for the plan.
Alleged preparation and surveillance
According to the allegations, the three men traveled to Connecticut between August 21 and August 24, 2024. During that period, investigators say they obtained rental vehicles and supplies and monitored the intended target and his parents.
The Connecticut case remains at the charging stage, and the allegations have been laid out in court filings and statements by prosecutors. No outcome beyond the indictment was provided in the source material.
Broader enforcement focus
The cases come amid broader warnings from US law enforcement about crypto-linked theft and fraud. The source article also cited an incident in Wilmington on July 27, 2026, where a police officer on routine patrol at a gas station stopped a woman in her 90s from losing $10,000 in a Bitcoin kiosk scam.
Police departments and federal task forces have continued to warn that legitimate businesses do not request payment in cryptocurrency. Agencies including the FBI’s Violent Crimes Task Force, LAPD Robbery-Homicide, and local departments are described as increasingly coordinating across jurisdictions as organized groups target high-value crypto holdings.
For now, the clearest confirmed next steps are the sentence already imposed on Halem and the pending federal proceedings in Connecticut against the three Missouri defendants.
Source: Coin Edition