By On Monday 15th July at around 10 p.m., a business in Sparkhill, Birmingham; The Bitcoin Exchange, experienced a raid by a group of thieves in masks.
Police released footage that showed the thieves right from the time they started to raid the bank through to when they attempted stealing the cash machine inside the Bitcoin bank using a rope that they had attached to their car.
Some horrified onlookers managed to capture the incident on their cameras. The videos captured the three masked men running in and out of the premises, situated on the corner of a street.
The group panicked at the sound of a loud alarm that rang as they were trying to make off with the machine, forcing them to abort their mission of making a hasty exit with their loot.
The thieves then scampered back into their car and sped off, after one of them had to return outside to close the tailgate which they had accidentally left open.
The Bitcoin Exchange CEO, Adam Gramowski, confirmed that the thieves did not manage to steal any cash from the premise. Meanwhile, West Midlands Police is currently investigating the unfortunate incident.
Gramowski states that he initially thought that the thieves had been trying to rip off an ATM from the wall of the building.
Following a post on Facebook captioned, “Good morning Birmingham- let’s start the day off with a video of a robbery in Sparkhill last night”, people suggested that the onlookers who were closest to the gang’s car could have quickly taken out their key while the men were inside instead of just watching and taking videos.
“I assume that what can be seen in the clip was some sort of rope that the robbers wanted to attach to the ATM to rip it off the wall and drag it behind the car.” Adam Gramowski
The business’ CCTV operator spotted the thieves and used their countermeasures to scare them away. The robbers were after cash, but unfortunately, the server sends the Bitcoins directly. Hence there were no BTC in the machine.
Inquiries are ongoing, and anyone with any information that would be helpful is requested to reach out through a Live Chat at west-midlands.police.uk which is available between 8 a.m. and midnight or call 101 which is operational 24 hours a day, quoting crime reference 20BE/168249B/19. ‘Crimestoppers can be called anonymously on 0800 555 111.’
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