Thieves steal $4k loot from Bitcoin ATM but leave treasure chest behind

Two of Canada’s worst criminals stole $4,000 from a Bitcoin ATM inside a grocery store in Vernon, Canada on Tuesday.

The dubious duo smashed their way into the store with sledgehammers before breaking open the Bitcoin ATM. Despite fleeing with $4,000, they left $50,000 in the machine that was held in another canister.

While the robbers are still on the run, the store’s CCTV camera caught a glimpse of their grey Nissan Sentra and its licence plate.

Police remain “confident” that they will catch the perpetrators with the help of footage from the 16 CCTV cameras across the store.

The owner of the store has now revealed that he no longer plans to keep the Bitcoin ATM as it attracts unwanted attention.

Vernon is a small town in British Columbia with a population of just 40,000 people, so the decision to install a Bitcoin ATM was peculiar in itself.

Bitcoin ATMs have long been a target for low-level criminals. Earlier this year in Birmingham, England, masked burglars stormed a physical Bitcoin exchange, although they didn’t steal anything of note according to the store’s owner.

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Oliver Knight

Londoner ‘Ollie’ graduated from Birmingham City University with a journalism degree in 2016. He combines his writing with his love of crypto and blockchain here at Coin Rivet, saying “It disrupts well-established institutions (banks) while giving an avenue to the less fortunate to achieve financial freedom.” Like all true Londoners, his pet hate is… “People standing on the left-hand side of the escalators on the Tube!”.