Just read about this wild case - a former LAPD officer named Eric Halem got convicted for kidnapping a teenager and stealing $350k in Bitcoin. Like, he actually impersonated a cop to break into someone's apartment in Koreatown with other guys. They threatened the kid and forced him to hand over a hard drive with all his crypto on it.

The crazy part? Eric Halem had been with LAPD for 13 years before retiring in 2022, and he was still working as a reserve officer when this went down in 2024. The defense tried to argue the victim got his wealth through fraud, but that didn't really matter for the robbery charge.

Halem's getting sentenced at the end of March. The other guys involved haven't gone to trial yet. This whole thing is pretty insane - a former cop using his knowledge to pull off a crypto robbery. Makes you think about how much access these guys had and how they could use it.