Curse of the crypto millionaires from tycoon found dismembered in a suitcase to shocking kidnap torture ordeal and ‘paranoid’ CEO who drowned after mysterious FBI tweet

They were fabulously wealthy and living lives most could only dream of, until they were made targets of brutal murders, kidnap, and torture.

Over the past decade, a chilling pattern has emerged in the high-stakes world of cryptocurrency. A string of influential crypto tycoons have suffered in circumstances so bizarre and eerily timed that conspiracy theories practically write themselves.   

Helicopter crashes, alleged suicides, attempted kidnaps, and even bodies found in suitcases – each case is more baffling than the last.

Just earlier this week, the mother and two-year-old grandchild of a major cryptocurrency company executive were the victims of a violent attempted kidnapping which took place in broad daylight in the streets of Paris.  

In 2022, 29-year-old millionaire Nikolai Mushegian tweeted that the Mossad was after him just hours before he was found dead, fully clothed, face down in the surf off a Puerto Rico beach. No foul play was ever officially determined.

Just weeks later, Russian crypto billionaire Vyacheslav Taran was killed when his helicopter mysteriously crashed near Monaco on a clear day, with the pilot also dying. 

And in 2018, the CEO of Canada’s largest crypto exchange who supposedly died suddenly in India, took the passwords to £187million in investor funds to his grave. Some still believe he faked his death to escape mounting pressure and criminal investigations.

With crypto fortunes rising and falling in the blink of an eye, and billions of pounds at stake, the space has become a Wild West of digital gold, offshore accounts, and dangerous enemies. 

Crypto millionaire found dismembered in suitcase by children

Fernando Pérez Algaba, 41, a cryptocurrency influencer and entrepreneur, was shot and dismembered in Argentina in 2023.

Dismembered parts of his body were found stuffed in a suitcase by a group of children playing near a stream in Buenos Aires.

Algaba, who amassed a fortune by renting luxury vehicles and selling digital coins, first went missing on July 18 and his remains were found on July 23. 

Three days later, his head was discovered floating downstream in a rucksack.

Authorities identified the influencer by his tattoos and fingerprints and an autopsy revealed he had been shot at least three times before he was dismembered.

Algaba, who lived in Barcelona, had rented a home in Argentina for at least a week before his body parts were discovered.

Reports swirled that he had been struggling with debts, tax issues, and requests for money from investors in a ‘failed’ cryptocurrency business that he admitted had gotten ‘out of hand’.

In an eerie social-media post shared with his 900,000 followers before his death, Algaba reportedly wrote: ‘It’s incredible how there are such evil people in the world that while you’re thinking of helping them, they’re thinking of destroying you’.  

‘Paranoid’ millionaire drowns after tweeting Mossad were after him

In 2022, a ‘paranoid’ crypto visionary drowned on a Puerto Rico beach after tweeting that he feared the CIA and Mossad were going to murder him. 

Nikolai Mushegian, 29, died on October 28, hours after posting his final tweet.

The troubled young millionaire had a history of mental health problems and his family do not believe there was any foul play.

In a tweet hours before he died, he said: ‘CIA and Mossad and pedo elite are running some kind of sex trafficking entrapment blackmail ring out of Puerto Rico and Caribbean islands.

‘They are going to frame me with a laptop planted by my ex [girlfriend] who was a spy. They will torture me to death.’

Mushegian was discovered by a surfer in the water at Ashford Beach on October 29, fully clothed and carrying his wallet. 

Before his death, his family had become so concerned for his welfare that his father had gone to stay with him in Condado, Puerto Rico, where he is said to have lived in a £4.5million house. 

His friends in the community were also left stunned by his death.

‘Yea so Nikolai is still F****** DEAD my money is on him being murdered he was found drowned 4 hours after his riskiest tweet ever.

‘He had all year to drown randomly or be mugged, so it seems unlikely that his death was unrelated to his tweet…’ said Ameen Soleimani, the CEO of Spankchain.

One of Nikolai’s friends also told the Post that his paranoia was partly informed.

‘Some of his paranoia was based on fact.

‘He’d discover things. He knew things. Nikolai got bored a lot with the mundane of life. He’d go after things, constantly putting himself in weird positions. It wasn’t for the money.

‘He was interested in why things were the way they were and the corruption behind it.’ 

Missing US crypto king found dismembered by plumbers 

The body of Christian Peev, 41, was discovered after workers were called to clear a blocked drain in an apartment in Sofia, Bulgaria, in 2023.

Investigators believed the alleged killer Vesco Valchinov had dismembered the investor’s body and dumped his remains down the toilet. 

Police said they then found bones and his head buried elsewhere. 

Peev, who held US and Bulgarian citizenship, graduated from university in the US and built his wealth through crypto investments.

He was a regular visitor to high-society parties and events before he was murdered, and it is believed this is where he met his alleged killer, who worked as a bartender.

Peev was reportedly murdered between August 8 and 9. Local media report that the alleged murderer killed his victim with a dumbbell and then dismembered his body in the bathroom of his apartment.

Another man, named Konstantin Subotinov, allegedly helped the killer hide the dismembered corpse of the victim.   

Crypto chief’s daughter and grandchild victims of violent attempted kidnapping

In May 2025, the 34-year-old daughter of a major cryptocurrency company executive was walking down Rue Pache in Paris when three armed men approached her.

The group tried to force her and her toddler into a white van after hitting the child’s father, who tried to intervene.

Footage filmed by an onlooker from his apartment window showed the woman grab a handgun belonging to the attackers before throwing it away.

In the shocking clip, as he is being beaten, the father appears to be yelling: ‘Help! She’s pregnant!’

The victims’ screams eventually attracted attention, which led to the attackers fleeing in their van.

Passers-by were seen arriving on the scene ready to assist as the assailants scrambled to freedom, with one desperately throwing a fire extinguisher at the van.

The vehicle was later abandoned on a nearby street, according to local reports. 

It was also said the child, who did not appear in the video, had tear gas in his eyes.

The anti-crime unit of Paris’s judicial police was called in to investigate. 

According initial findings, the woman and her son are the daughter and grandson of Pierre Noizat, the chief executive and co-founder of Paymium, a French cryptocurrency exchange platform founded in 2011 that describes itself as a European pioneer in Bitcoin trading.

Noizat’s fortune is not publicly known.

One witness, 61-year-old Jean-Jacques, said: ‘I heard screaming so I went outside.

‘I saw hooded and armed men running away and I turned my head and saw a man with a bloody head, he was lying on the ground. There was blood everywhere’. 

Young Bitcoin millionaire robbed by gang dressed as Santa before taking his own life

Pavel Nyashin, 23, was robbed of more than £280,000 after showing bundles of cash on his kitchen table on social media died in a suspected suicide after he was left penniless.

The videos he uploaded accidentally revealed his address in St Petersburg, making him an easy target for robbers in 2018.

His heartbroken mum said a large amount of the stolen cash belonged to potential Bitcoin investors and he was unable to pay them back.

The cottage where he was staying was raided by a gang dressed in Santa Claus costumes, who stole £234,000 and £51,550 in cash.

They also bagged a number of iPhone X handsets as well as beating him up.

Pavel, who blogged about cryptocurrency, as well as providing a consultancy service for potential investors, reportedly became depressed after the robbery in January.

Police say there was no sign of anyone else being involved in his death. It is not known if the gang who robbed him has ever been caught.  

‘Digital currency guru’ jumps from fifth-floor of a hotel

Javier Biosca, a crypto scammer who swindled 300 Spanish investors, took his own life in November 2022 after being subjected to harassment by international mafias.

From March 2019 until autumn 2020, Biosca was deemed the biggest cryptocurrency scammer in Spain.  He founded the Algorithms Group in London – a firm dedicated to attracting small investors eager to jump on the cryptocurrency bandwagon. 

Through this, he deceived hundreds of clients – including lawyers, notaries, businessmen and dangerous Russian and Romanian mobsters based in Andalusia, in the south of Spain. 

According to police sources, each person he interacted with had lost at least £42,000 in his pyramid scheme. 

Biosca presented himself as a digital currency expert, capable of increasing investment between 20 per cent and 25 per cent each week. When his firm began to operate in the summer of 2019, a single bitcoin had a value of about £7,495.

But the crypto boom didn’t last forever.  Eventually, all three of the digital currencies that Biosca was heavily invested in began to lose value at a rate that was much faster than his ability to amass new customers. 

A year after the foundation of the Algorithms Group, salaries were starting to get delayed. And then, commissions fell: 15 per cent fell to 10 per cent and then eight per cent.

By the end of 2020, the Algorithms Group had stopped paying returns to its customers. Around that time, the value of bitcoin had collapsed to around £4,270. The decline would only continue.

But Biosca was living a life of luxury behind the scenes, paying £11,200 a month renting a mansion in Marbella and leasing expensive cars.

He also hosted glitzy parties along the Costa del Sol and hired a team of bodyguards that included former Spanish and Colombian police officers to protect his rich guests.

In March 2021, several of his clients began realising they had been cheated and filed complaints before a judge issued a search-and-arrest warrant against him for fraud, money laundering, forging documents and running a criminal organisation.

Spanish police captured him four months later, during a routine traffic stop in the town of Nerja. He spent eight months in jail, until March 2022, when a mysterious guarantor posted a bail of £840,000.

When he got out of jail, Biosca had lost more than 40 pounds. During his time in prison, he had been badly beaten by other inmates. 

According to two close friends, the guarantor was actually a group of scammed people. When they realised that he wouldn’t be able to get them their money, they withdrew the bail, and the National Court ordered Biosca’s return to prison.

He was accused him of an alleged fraud of £687million. Meanwhile, the most dangerous mafias to whom he owed money were already on his trail. 

Upon his release from prison, he jumped from the fifth-floor of a hotel in fear of being killed by the Russian and Bulgarian gangsters whom he had defrauded.  

Brazilian crypto businessman shot dead with sub-machine guns at airport

Antonio Vinicius Gritzbach had ties to one of Brazil’s most powerful criminal groups, before being shot dead at Guarulhos Airport in São Paulo last year.

He had recently entered into a plea bargain with local prosecutors to provide information about Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC) – or First Capital Command.

But the businessman received death threats from the gang as a result, local media reported.

Footage of the horror killing showed two hooded men exiting a car holding sub-machine guns before they began firing outside the airport terminal.

Gritzbach, a former member of the PCC, dropped his bag and tried to run away – but he was shot several times and died at the scene. 

A cryptocurrency expert, Gritzbach had been in the process of telling officials how he helped the group launder millions of dollars.

Reports in Brazilian media suggested he was once considered a key player in the gang’s operation.

As part of his plea deal, Gritzbach had promised to help investigators locate other members and hand over documents.

In exchange, São Paulo prosecutors are said to have offered Gritzbach a judicial pardon and a reduction of his sentence for money laundering before he was murdered.

Russian tycoon killed in helicopter crash near Monaco 

Entrepreneur Vyacheslav Taran, 53, died after his helicopter plunged near the resort town of Villefranche-sur-Mer after taking off from Lausanne in Switzerland in 2022.

Since the crash that killed Taran happened in good, clear weather – and after another passenger reportedly cancelled last minute – mystery surrounded the tycoon’s death. 

Taran, the co-founder of trading and investment platform Libertex and Forex Club, was flying from Lausanne with an experienced pilot in a single-engine H130 helicopter when it crashed at around 1pm on November 25.

A 35-year-old French pilot was also killed.

The deputy public prosecutor of Nice, who visited the scene, said the fault of a third party could not be ruled out.

Another unidentified passenger had been due to join Taran on the flight, but they cancelled last minute, according to local reports from the time.

CEO of Canada’s largest crypto exchange dies on honeymoon

Gerald Cotten’s death in 2018 prompted so much intrigue and controversy that it was investigated in the Netflix documentary Trust No One.

The 30-year-old founder of the bankrupt cryptocurrency firm QuadrigaCX died while honeymooning in India with his wife on December 9, 2018.

He was the only person with knowledge of keys needed to access crypto assets worth millions of dollars.

The odd circumstances surrounding his untimely death also included the fact that he signed a will just nine days before his demise – fueling suspicions that Cotten, CEO of Canada’s largest crypto exchange, faked the whole thing.

By 2022, £127million was missing, prompting investigators and victims to question whether he orchestrated the mystery and pocketed the funds. Some investors even demanded his body be exhumed to prove it’s really him.

His firm, at the time of his death, had about 115,000 clients.

Rumors on the internet spread that Cotten could have still been alive, living off embezzled funds.

The hard drives that granted access to the assets, which were not connected to the internet, stored the cryptocurrency of 75,000 clients and for which only he had the password.

Investigators found the wallets were commonly used to store Bitcoin starting in April 2014, but in April 2018 all but one of them were abruptly emptied and left dormant.

The final wallet was still used to transfer currency until December 3, six days before Cotten died, before it was also left empty.

According to reports from the time, Cotten and his wife were nine days into their honeymoon when the couple arrived at the £700-a-night Oberoi Rajvilas hotel in Jaipur on December 8, 2018.

Soon after checking in, Cotten complained of acute stomach pain and was driven to a nearby hospital where he was diagnosed with traveler’s diarrhea. Just 24 hours later, he was dead.

No autopsy was performed.  

Forbes ‘Bitcoin millionaire’ found dead with gunshot wound

Doctor John Forsyth, a prominent figure in the crypto space and an emergency room doctor, was found dead on May 30, 2024, with a gunshot wound.

He had been missing for a week after failing to show up for work at the Mercy Hospital in Cassville, Missouri. 

His unlocked car was discovered near the hospital with his belongings, including his wallet, passport, laptop, and work briefcase, inside. The police did not suspect any foul play in his death. 

Forsyth was the co-founder of ONFO coin, a referral-based cryptocurrency project based on ‘social mining’. 

He was also an early adopter of Bitcoin and a vocal critic of the US dollar. In 2020, Forbes called him a ‘Bitcoin millionaire’ who had a passion for mathematics and blockchain technology.   

‘The Father of Bitcoin Toxicity’ drowns off coast of Costa Rica

Mircea Popescu, 41, left behind a bitcoin fortune that was estimated to be worth more than £1.5billion after he died suddenly by drowning in 2021.

He was an early adopter of the cryptocurrency, having established the ‘bitcoin securities exchange’ MPEx in 2012, but was also known by some as ‘the father of bitcoin toxicity’. 

‘Bitcoin can kill all your friends, and all the people you respect… It can poop in your drink and rape your pets… If lightning strikes where you sit, whether you feel a warm cosy sort of love or the most burning hatred imaginable is strictly irrelevant – electricity stays,’ he wrote in a chilling blog post before he died.

The Romanian national drowned at Playa Hermosa, in Costa Rica, according to local reports which also stated that he was swept away by the current.

Popescu generated ‘an aggressive brand of unapologetic bitcoin evangelism that made his influence enduring despite documented instances of sexism, bigotry and anti-semitism,’ Bitcoin Magazine said following his death.   

Father of crypto billionaire kidnapped and held for ransom rescued with missing finger

In May 2025, the father of a cryptocurrency millionaire who had been kidnapped and held for ransom in a Paris suburb was rescued by French police.

The unnamed man was attacked in broad daylight in central Paris when he was bundled into a delivery van by four men wearing balaclavas.

French media said the victim had one finger missing when he was rescued from a house in Palaiseau, south of Paris. Four suspects were arrested.

The victim was reported to be in his 50s and Le Parisien newspaper said his kidnappers demanded his wealthy son pay a £4.2million to £5.9million ransom.  

Troubled banking heir dies of heart attack before checking into rehab

Matthew Mellon died of a heart attack in 2018 while preparing to check into a drug rehabilitation clinic in Cancun, Mexico.

He held XRP coins valued at upwards of£150million – and was the only person who could access the cryptocurrencies.

Mellon reportedly never shared the keys needed to access the XRP with anyone. Some of the keys were held in other people’s names in storage around the US.

XRP was trading at only a fraction of a penny when Mellon first took an interest in the asset. At its height the cryptocurrency has traded at more than 75p per coin.

At its peak, Mellon’s initial £1.5million investment was worth around £750billion.

Mellon was survived by his first wife Tamara Mellon – who is the co-founder of Jimmy Choo – and his second wife, fashion designer Nicole Hanley. He also has three children – one with Tamara and two with Nicole.