Crypto Student TORTURED – Wallets Drained Alive

A brutal “wrench attack” in Vienna shows how lawless global elites and weak borders are turning digital wealth into a new battleground where ordinary people are left defenseless.

Story Snapshot

A 21-year-old Ukrainian student in Vienna was kidnapped, tortured for his crypto passwords, robbed, and burned alive in his father’s Mercedes.
Police say his crypto wallets were drained and rapidly cashed out, highlighting a growing wave of violent “wrench attacks” on digital asset holders.
Both suspects fled Austria for Ukraine, exposing dangerous gaps in cross-border justice and extradition.
Security researchers warn these attacks are surging worldwide as criminals follow money into crypto while governments lag behind.

A Young Student Targeted for His Crypto Wealth

In late November, a 21-year-old Ukrainian student living in Vienna with his partner and child vanished after what began as a confrontation in a luxury hotel garage. Reports identify him as Danylo Kuzmin, son of the deputy mayor of Kharkiv, a detail that made his lifestyle and likely wealth impossible to hide. Investigators say a fellow Ukrainian student ambushed him in the underground parking of the SO/Vienna hotel, beat him, and forced him into a Mercedes S 350D with Ukrainian plates.

Over the next several hours, police believe the attackers tortured Kuzmin to force him to surrender passwords to at least two cryptocurrency wallets holding substantial digital assets. Once they had the keys, they allegedly accessed his accounts, transferred the funds out, and moved quickly to convert the stolen crypto into hard cash. For his family back home, a chilling sign appeared when they noticed his wallets had been completely emptied before anyone knew he was dead.

Torture, Murder, and a Trail of Crypto Cash

After extracting the passwords, the suspects reportedly drove Kuzmin across the city toward Vienna’s Donaustadt district, a less trafficked area under rail tracks. Investigators say the men stopped at a gas station on Wagramer Straße, bought gasoline, and then parked the Mercedes under an Ostbahn rail viaduct. There, they are accused of dousing him and the interior with fuel, setting the car ablaze, and leaving him in the back seat to die in a fire that burned most of his body.

Residents awakened by a car alarm and flames called emergency services around half past midnight. Firefighters discovered the charred Mercedes with a body in the rear, later identified as Kuzmin. Autopsy results described catastrophic burns over roughly eighty percent of his body and concluded he likely died from suffocation or heatstroke inside the burning vehicle. Forensic teams recovered a melted gas canister from the wreck, supporting the theory of intentional arson tied directly to the crypto-motivated torture and robbery.

Flight to Ukraine and Cross-Border Justice Gaps

While Austrian authorities were just beginning to piece together the horror scene, the two Ukrainian suspects had already slipped across the border. Using surveillance footage from the hotel garage, the gas station, and traffic routes, along with border records, investigators traced their movements and determined they crossed from Austria into Ukraine on the morning after the killing. That rapid escape underscored how easily violent criminals can exploit open European borders once they secure cash and leave a burned-out crime scene behind.

Within days, Ukrainian law enforcement arrested both men, reportedly seizing large amounts of U.S. dollars believed to be proceeds from the stolen and rapidly liquidated crypto. Yet Austria and Ukraine lack a straightforward extradition framework for this situation, forcing Austrian officials to hand formal jurisdiction to Ukrainian prosecutors. That means a murder committed on Austrian soil now depends on another country’s courts, with most evidence, witnesses, and crime-scene work sitting across the border, far from where trial decisions will be made.

“Wrench Attacks” and the New Face of Crypto Crime

Crypto security experts classify this case as a textbook “wrench attack,” a term describing old-fashioned physical coercion used to steal digital wealth when hacking is harder than simply threatening a victim. Researchers tracking such incidents say documented physical attacks on crypto holders have surged, with dozens of cases worldwide and growth rates far outpacing earlier years. Many of these crimes cluster in wealthy Western regions where digital assets are common and criminals know young, tech-savvy people may quietly control fortunes on their phones.

CRYPTO NEWSWIRE: Student burned alive after being 'tortured into handing over his crypto'

A WRENCH ATTACK ENDS WITH ARSON: A student who was burned alive in his father’s Mercedes in Vienna was likely extorted for a large sum of money he held in cryptocurrency, local authorities… pic.twitter.com/4qReZ46kv3

— Brian Harrod (@GetTheDailyDirt) December 5, 2025

Because self-custodied crypto sits outside traditional banks, there is no automatic reversal once a victim, under torture or threat, hands over seed phrases or passwords. When funds move through exchanges or over-the-counter brokers and become cash, tracing them becomes difficult and recovery nearly impossible. For Americans who value individual liberty and financial independence, this tragedy is a stark reminder: personal responsibility now includes serious physical security, and governments that still struggle to control their own borders and criminals are not prepared for this new battleground.