Mexican prosecutors claim that a homicide that occurred in Mexico State is related to a Bitcoin cold wallet. The victims included the keyboardist of the band Camilo S é ptimo, Jonathan Mel é ndez, his pregnant wife, their 3-year-old daughter, and a domestic worker; a 6-year-old boy from the family survived.

The prosecution referred to the target of the case as a cold wallet.

According to the prosecution, the suspect entered the home of Mel é ndez in order to find a cold wallet that was believed to contain “millions of dollars in Bitcoin.” After the incident, the local prosecution focused their investigation on the motive for the crime involving encrypted assets.

A suspect had dealings with the deceased.

The prosecution revealed that the two suspects are Diego Sebasti Án and Gerardo respectively. In accordance with the privacy rules of Mexican criminal procedure, the authorities have not made public their full surnames.

The prosecution alleges that Diego Sebasti had a business relationship with Mel and ndez, and used this to get close to the victim's residence. The prosecution also accuses him of offering to pay Gerardo 2 million pesos, approximately $118,000, in exchange for assistance in obtaining the relevant cryptocurrency assets. Both individuals were arrested on September 2.

Cold wallets are difficult to protect against offline coercion.

Cold wallets do not directly store Bitcoin; instead, they hold the private keys that control access to the assets. Common forms include hardware wallets such as Ledger and Trezor. Such tools can reduce the risk of cyberattacks, but they cannot protect the holder from physical violence or coercion offline.

Similar cases are not isolated incidents. In June of this year, two brothers from Texas, USA, pleaded guilty to another case. According to the prosecution, the two men held a family in Minnesota at gunpoint for over 8 hours and forced the victims to transfer more than 8 million dollars in cryptocurrency assets.