How crypto raiders tortured B.C. family with waterboarding, sex assault, in $2M heist

PORT COQUITLAM — When a woman answered a knock at the door of her home in Port Moody, B.C., in the spring of 2024, she was met by two men in Canada Post uniforms who said they had a package to deliver.

What unfolded over the next 13 hours was a horrific ordeal for the woman, her husband and their 18-year-old daughter, involving waterboarding, sexual assault and death threats, as a gang of home invaders conducted a cryptocurrency heist that saw them escape with more than $2 million worth of bitcoin.

The gang, including a Hong Kong man brought to Canada specifically to help conduct the raid, forced the daughter to strip naked, sexually assaulted her on camera, and used her screams to persuade her parents to hand over details of their bank and cryptocurrency accounts.

It ended the next morning after the teenager escaped and ran to a friend’s home. When police arrived around 8:30 a.m., the father emerged from the home naked from the waist down, his hands zip tied behind his back, while his wife was found bound, gagged and wrapped in a blanket.

Details of the April 27, 2024, home invasion are included in the reasons for sentencing of one of the attackers, 35-year-old Hong Kong man Tsz Wing Boaz Chan.

Chan was sentenced to seven years in prison by a B.C. provincial court judge on Nov. 14, and the judge’s reasons for the sentence reveal the horrific night endured by the victims, whose identities are protected by a publication ban.

Chan pleaded guilty to break and enter, unlawful confinement and sexual assault, but police say his accomplices remain at large and the investigation is ongoing.

Port Moody police spokesman Const. Sam Zacharias said in an interview Thursday that it’s likely Chan will be deported after completing his sentence, and investigators are still working to find the other men involved.

Exactly how the family came to be targeted remains unknown, he said.

“We know what they were targeted for, which in this case was cryptocurrency.”

The robbery is one of a number of cases where B.C. police say the owners of digital assets have been targeted with real-world violence.

It came nine months after the Delta Police Department and Richmond RCMP issued a warning to “high-value” cryptocurrency investors after a spate of robberies in the Lower Mainland.

“Police have yet to confirm whether these incidents are linked, however, a discernible pattern of operating, or modus operandi, appears to be emerging,” the warning said. “In each of the cases, the suspects gain access to a victim’s home by posing as delivery people or persons of authority. Once let inside the home, the suspects rob the victims of information that gives access to their cryptocurrency accounts.”

“The suspects appear to know the victims are heavily invested in cryptocurrency, know where they live, and are robbing them in their own homes,” the July 2023 warning said. Both forces declined to provide details of the incidents, although they said one person had been arrested.

The sentencing of Chan by Judge Robin McQuillan describes a long and complex plan executed by four invaders, as well as another suspect at the end of a phone line who used a filter to change his voice as he issued demands of the father, who had “boasted” about his success with cryptocurrency investments in B.C.’s Chinese community.

After the fake postal workers and two accomplices gained entry to the home, the three residents were “pushed down, and their wrists were restrained with zap straps.”

The home invaders spoke English, Mandarin and Cantonese and referred to each another by numbers, one to four. The father and mother were both repeatedly waterboarded, as the men demanded access to cryptocurrency accounts.

The blindfolded father “was waterboarded at least 10 times and each time he felt that he was taken to the edge of death,” the judge says in a description of the man’s victim impact statement. “But more significant was the fact that he had to hear his wife and daughter being assaulted and degraded while next to him.”

He was stripped naked and beaten repeatedly throughout the night, the home invaders threatening to “cut off his genitals” if he didn’t provide access to his bank and cryptocurrency accounts.

The father, the reasons say, had previously “boasted and exaggerated about his success with cryptocurrency investments,” although he had been defrauded in the past, telling the man on the phone that he lost his cryptocurrency in a 2018 fraud.

But there were still large amounts in the couple’s accounts.

“Over the course of the evening, the men made multiple withdrawals from both (the mother and father’s) cryptocurrency accounts,” the document says. “In total, the value of the funds taken amounted to approximately US$1,600,000, which effectively drained their accounts.”

The next morning, the father heard the doorbell ring, then heard the men discussing how they would leave. After they left, the man broke free of his restraints and went to the door to find police arriving, having already been called to the scene by the daughter who had also broken free. It was 8:30 a.m.

Police found a trove of evidence left behind by the home invaders, including a replica gun, a knife, clothing, cellphones, bear spray, batons, and several surveillance cameras that had been installed in the home.

“The police also found three cameras outside facing the home and one power source for them hidden in the bushes next to the street,” the judge’s reasons say.

Footage from CCTV cameras on neighbouring homes showed the men had tended to the surveillance equipment in the days leading up to the home invasion.

One of them was Chan.

Port Moody police found out from the Canada Border Services Agency that he’d arrived in Canada on April 5, and returned to Hong Kong on May 1, 2024.

Chan was arrested trying to re-enter Canada on July 25, 2024, and his DNA was matched to one of the profiles lifted from the home invasion scene.

He revealed he had been paid about $50,000 for his part in the raid, the same amount the court ordered as restitution to be paid back to the victims.

“In early 2024, someone Mr. Chan knew as an acquaintance approached him and proposed an opportunity for him to earn some money in Canada,” the court document says. “The acquaintance said that it involved going into someone’s house in Canada, beating someone up, and then leaving. At first, he thought the acquaintance was joking.”

Chan, the court found, arrived in Canada and was taken to a home where he lived for three weeks with three other men who wore masks, “and he understood that they were not to speak to one another.”

He denied being “directly” involved in the threats and sexual assault.

“He apologized to the victims. He says that he has engaged in considerable self-reflection since his arrest. He says that he had the opportunity to withdraw from participating in this crime, but through his weakness, he did not do so.”

The judge’s summary of the father’s impact statement says the family is financially devastated and carries three mortgages for which they struggle to make minimum payments.

The teenage victim also filed an impact statement. The judge’s summary says she remains “tormented” by images and dreams of the attack.

When she goes out alone, “she carries a weapon for her protection.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 21, 2024.

Darryl Greer, The Canadian Press