Four Suspects, One Video Call, Zero Crypto Kiosks: £10K Bounty for Birmingham Wrench Attack 🪙

Crimestoppers is offering a reward of up to £10,000 for information leading to an arrest and conviction in a December 2025 home invasion in the West Midlands in which a couple were forced to transfer a large sum of cryptocurrency to a wallet controlled by attackers. The appeal was issued on Wednesday, more than nine months after the incident, and is being handled by the UK independent charity that takes anonymous crime tips across the country.

The couple returned to their house in Smith's Wood, Solihull, on the eastern edge of Birmingham, at around 5:20 p.m. on Saturday, December 13, 2025. As they opened the front door, three men got out of a car parked nearby and pushed in behind them. West Midlands Police said the husband was assaulted and suffered significant injuries, while his wife, who was pregnant with the couple's third child, was threatened with a knife. The pair were coerced into moving the funds to a wallet the attackers controlled, BBC News reported, and the men left with the cryptocurrency and several high-value watches in what is believed to have been a black BMW X3. All four suspects are thought to be in their twenties, with face coverings and hoods making descriptions difficult, though one was described as a black man with a small diagonal scar beneath his left eyebrow. Investigators believe a fourth person directed the assailants over a video call.

"Four people planned this and four people know exactly what happened that evening," said Alan Edwards, Crimestoppers' regional manager for the West Midlands, who added that others would have been told afterwards or would have noticed someone suddenly flush with money. Home invasions have emerged as the defining shift in physical attacks on crypto holders in the first half of 2026, according to blockchain security firm CertiK, rising to 20 cases, about 41% of all incidents, from a single publicly reported case a year earlier. The firm verified 52 "wrench attacks" in total, with recorded exposure of $124.1 million, up from $10.5 million in H1 2025. CertiK also described an increasingly layered structure, with organizers who buy data and coordinate logistics sitting above the people who carry out the attacks. Anyone with information about the Birmingham incident is asked to contact Crimestoppers anonymously.