Crypto investor Evan Luthra says he was the victim of the Oxford car robbery and kidnapping of 4 November 2025, a case in which Thames Valley Police never named the people attacked. In an interview with BeInCrypto published on Sunday 8 November 2026, a year after the attack, Luthra said more than $2 million in crypto was taken from his exchange accounts in about 30 minutes. Just under $1 million has come back, he said, and the trial has been pushed back from this month to November 2027.
Those figures are his. In 2025 police confirmed the attack, announced four arrests and charged one man, but they have not published Luthra’s numbers, his name or a new trial date.
The man charged, Abdul Malik Cali, 24, faces five counts of conspiracy to commit robbery. He has not been tried, and he is presumed innocent.
What Thames Valley Police confirmed in 2025
According to the police appeal as reported by Hits Radio Kent and LBC on 18 November 2025, five people, two men and three women, were travelling by car from Oxford to London on the afternoon of Tuesday 4 November when men wearing face coverings got into the vehicle while it was still in Oxford. They took a watch and the victims’ phones, and forced one victim to transfer cryptocurrency out of an account. After about 30 minutes they left the vehicle in the Five Mile Drive area of Oxford, and the victims called the police.
Police asked anyone with footage of three vehicles to come forward: a black BMW saloon, a blue Hyundai Ioniq and a silver Mercedes-Benz Vito, seen between 1pm and 4pm that day on Yarnton Road and Sandy Lane, between Kidlington and Yarnton, or on Five Mile Drive and three nearby streets in Oxford. “We are supporting the victims and keeping them updated during our complex investigation,” Detective Sergeant Stuart McMaster said, as quoted by LBC.
Officers had worked through house-to-house inquiries, CCTV, number-plate cameras and cryptocurrency tracing. According to LBC’s report of the appeal, they executed warrants in London and Birmingham and made arrests in Kent. Four men were held and all four were released on bail.
| Arrested man | Arrested on suspicion of | Bailed until |
|---|---|---|
| 21, from London | conspiracy to commit robbery, kidnap, driving offences | 14 January 2026 |
| 37, from London | robbery, kidnap | 30 January 2026 |
| 23, from Kent | robbery, kidnap | 7 February 2026 |
| 19, from Birmingham | robbery, kidnap, possession of articles for use in fraud | 29 January 2026 |
On 16 December 2025, officers arrested Abdul Malik Cali, 24, of no fixed abode, at Heathrow Airport. He was charged with five counts of conspiracy to commit robbery, appeared at Oxford Magistrates’ Court on 17 December and was remanded in custody, Greatest Hits Radio Oxfordshire reported. His next hearing was set for Oxford Crown Court on 16 January 2026. The same report, which named the stolen watch as a Richard Mille, said five other people had been arrested and remained on police bail.
The 2025 arrests were on suspicion of kidnap, among other offences. The only charge announced so far, against Cali, is conspiracy to commit robbery. Public reports do not say what happened at the January hearing or whether anyone else has been charged.
Evan Luthra’s kidnapping account: over $2 million taken from Binance and Gate
Luthra’s account reached most readers through crypto outlets that summarised the BeInCrypto interview, including CoinCentral and Crypto Briefing on 8 and 9 November. Neither carries a direct quote from him, so what follows is his version as they report it.
He was in England for a speech at Oxford University, he says, and left the event with four friends in a car with a private driver, booked through an acquaintance, who had been taking him around for several days. On the way back to London, the driver turned into a quiet, tree-lined lane. Five masked men got in, punched him and said they were there only for him, according to CoinCentral’s summary.
He says he knew within ten seconds that it was a kidnapping and did not resist, because there were five of them. The men made him unlock his phone with Face ID, then moved just over $1.5 million out of his Binance account and about $600,000 in ether (ETH) from his Gate account. They had already taken his special-edition Richard Mille watch, put at about £450,000 in the police appeal, and then tried to get into his bank accounts. The total in crypto, he says, was over $2 million.
The attackers left with everyone’s phones. Luthra says the group walked to a police station and was still giving statements after midnight, without internet access the whole time. He calls that his biggest mistake: had he reached his laptop at the hotel and written to the exchanges, he believes, much more of the money could have been saved.
Crypto Briefing adds that Luthra blames police procedures for the delay in getting his phone back and thinks it raised his loss. CoinCentral does not report that criticism, and none of the reports carries a police reply to it.
Police and press figures differ by outlet
The amounts published in 2025 do not line up with each other, and none matches Luthra’s total. LBC reported £1.1 million in cryptocurrency transferred. Greatest Hits Radio Oxfordshire wrote £1.5 million. Hits Radio Kent, relaying the same police appeal, wrote $1.5 million and put the watch at about $590,000.
Luthra’s figure is higher because he counts two exchanges: more than $1.5 million from Binance plus about $600,000 in ETH from Gate. The police appeal, as LBC and Hits Radio Kent report it, mentions a single transfer by one victim, while Luthra describes withdrawals from two accounts. Neither side explains the gap, which could also come from exchange rates or from the date each value was measured.
Just under $1 million back, including $370,000 from Binance under a UK court order
He puts what he has recovered at just under $1 million. He declined to give an exact figure and says a large share of the money is still missing.
Once he had his devices back, he says, he contacted Binance and MEXC, and both froze part of the stolen funds; MEXC also shared data on where some of the money went, according to CoinCentral. Binance then returned about $370,000 under a UK court order made under the Proceeds of Crime Act, the law that lets courts freeze and recover the proceeds of crime. Luthra says it was the first such order involving Binance. No other source confirms that, and none of the reports carries a comment from Binance. The London law firm Cooke, Young & Keidan obtained the orders, CoinCentral reports.
The recovery shows what an exchange can do when stolen coins pass through it: freeze them, then release them under a court order. Coins held in a self-custody wallet have no such gatekeeper. Our guide to how centralized exchanges work explains how exchanges hold customer assets and why they can freeze them.
Trial moved to November 2027, according to Luthra
The trial was due to open in November 2026, Luthra says, and has been moved to November 2027 because the court now needs five weeks for the case instead of four, and no slot that long was free sooner. That would put the hearing two years after the attack.
The new date comes from Luthra alone: none of the police statements or court reports cited here gives it. He also says more arrests have been made since December 2025, with no names or numbers, and police have announced none publicly.
One more case in a busy year for wrench attacks
Physical attacks on crypto holders, known as wrench attacks, are getting more costly. CoinCentral, citing Chainalysis, puts the value stolen in such attacks at a record $58 million in 2025 and $30 million in the first half of 2026, with France seeing the sharpest rise. Jameson Lopp’s public list counted 702 cases in October, France leading the 2026 tally, as we reported in our piece on Lopp’s doubled wrench attack list.
Recent cases covered by Coindaro include the armed abduction in Toronto in which three Canadian soldiers were among seven people charged and a kidnapping near Novosibirsk where three men face trial over 1.3 billion roubles.
The next public marker would be an Oxford Crown Court listing for the trial, or a police statement on the further arrests Luthra describes.