B.C. family tortured for 13 hours by thieves impersonating mailmen in $2M crypto heist
Warning: This story contains disturbing details
A 35-year-old Hong Kong man has been sentenced to seven years in prison after a home invasion in which a gang of attackers traumatized a B.C. family with beatings, waterboarding and sexual assault while stealing some $2.2 million from their crypto accounts.
Tsz Wing Boaz Chan was sentenced by a B.C. provincial court judge on Nov. 14, according to court filings , which also found that he came to Canada specifically to participate in the attack. The family’s identities are protected by a publication ban.
Court papers reveal that on the evening of April 27, 2024, the family answered a knock at the front door of their house, revealing two men dressed in Canada Post uniforms and wearing face masks. They said they had a package that required a signature.
When the family’s daughter, a student, went to get her father, the men entered the house and were followed by two more, all wearing gloves and masks. They spoke in Mandarin, Cantonese and English and referred to each other only by numbers, one to four.
The intruders restrained the family members, pushing their heads down and binding their wrists with zip ties. They then took the family’s cellphones and laptops and demanded passwords, threatening to cut or kill them if they were not provided. One had a firearm or imitation firearm.
The home invasion lasted 13 hours.
At one point the invaders forced the daughter to strip naked, and to pose and speak for a video they said would be released if the family went to police. Among other things, she was told to look at the camera while saying: “I want you to f— me.”
The father was kept blindfolded throughout the attack except when his face was used to unlock his cellphone. He and his wife were both waterboarded by their attackers, a form of torture in which water is poured over a wet cloth covering the mouth, creating the sensation of drowning. The father was also stripped naked and beaten repeatedly.
Threatened with having his genitals cut off, the father gave the men access to his and his wife’s cryptocurrency accounts. Over the course of the evening, they made multiple withdrawals from both accounts totalling US$1.6 million (roughly $2.2 million Canadian), effectively draining the accounts.
The ordeal finally ended when the daughter, believing the attackers had left, escaped and called police from a friend’s house. The police arrived at about 8:30 a.m. and found the father naked from the waist down, his hands zip tied behind his back, while his wife was found bound, gagged and wrapped in a blanket.
A search of the home uncovered zip ties, surveillance cameras, knives, collapsible batons, duct tape, bear spray, bleach and other items. Police also found three cameras outside facing the home, and a power source for them hidden in the bushes.
Victim statements filed by the father and daughter describe “the profound impact these events have had on each of them and their family,” court records show.
The daughter is “tormented by images and dreams of the incident (and) has lost a sense of safety and views strangers with suspicion … and carries a weapon with her for protection.”
She also limits the time spent at home because of the memories of the attack. “What was once a place of comfort has become a place of distress for her.”
The father believed he was going to die that night. “But more significant was the fact that he had to hear his wife and daughter being assaulted and degraded while next to him. Despite his daughter’s assurance to him that she was not ‘fully raped,’ he believes that she was.”
He has also been tormented by flashbacks, anxiety, shame and guilt since the incident, records show. “His sense of security has been shattered” and “the taking of nude videos of his daughter will be a lifelong scar for all of them.”
Records show that Chan entered Canada on April 5 last year and left the country on May 1, bound for Hong Kong. On July 25, police learned he was returning to Vancouver, where he was arrested. He has been in custody since.
Records show that in early 2024, an acquaintance had approached him “and proposed an opportunity for him to earn some money in Canada” and offered the equivalent of six months of his family’s mortgage payments. Chan told the court he was “blinded” by the sum and agreed to participate. He did not have a prior criminal record.
Chan pleaded guilty to break and enter, unlawful confinement and sexual assault. He said he was not directly involved in the transfer of cryptocurrency and did not directly receive any of it.
He did receive HK$280,000, worth about $50,000 Canadian, an amount Judge R. McQuillan ordered him to pay as restitution to the family. The judge also noted that the jail sentence “must send a message that coming to Canada to commit such a heinous offence will not be tolerated and must be deterred.”
Police say the other three attackers remain at large, and the investigation is ongoing.
“Major Crime Detectives worked tirelessly to bring this matter before the courts,” said Const. Sam Zacharias of the Port Moody Police Department. “Mr. Chan did not operate alone and the matter remains active as investigators still work to identify other suspects.”
Police in B.C. have previously noted an increase in home invasions of this type. “The suspects appear to know the victims are heavily invested in cryptocurrency, know where they live, and are robbing them in their own homes,” said Staff Sgt. Jill Long of Delta Police in a 2023 briefing.
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