Martel Williams: Guilty Plea in a Plot to Rob a $245M Bitcoin Thief's Family

On Monday 26 October 2026, a 27-year-old man from St. Louis, Missouri, stood in federal court in Hartford, Connecticut, and admitted that two years earlier he had driven halfway across the United States to rob a family he had never met. Martel Williams pleaded guilty to conspiracy to interfere with commerce by robbery, a federal offence known as Hobbs Act robbery, which carries up to 20 years in prison. He remains free on bond. No sentencing date has been set.

The family he admitted stalking had something unusual in common with its attackers. Both sides were chasing the same fortune: part of more than 4,100 bitcoin, worth roughly $245 million in August 2024, stolen from a single man in Washington, D.C. a few days before. The son of the household had helped steal it. The people who sent Williams wanted it for themselves.

The theft that started it

Bitcoin is a digital currency that lives in a wallet controlled by secret passwords rather than in a bank account. Whoever holds the passwords can move the money, instantly and for good, and there is no bank to call to reverse it. On 18 August 2024, callers posing as support staff from Google and the crypto exchange Gemini (an exchange is the crypto version of a broker) talked a wealthy investor in Washington, D.C. into handing over access to his wallets. More than 4,100 bitcoin left his control. Court filings and reports value it at between $230 million and $245 million, depending on the price used. It is one of the largest thefts of crypto ever taken from one person.

The trick is called social engineering: no computer was broken into; a person was talked into opening the door. Prosecutors in Washington later said it was the work of a crew of young men who met through online gaming. Its leader, Malone Lam, a Singaporean living in Miami, was arrested in September 2024 and pleaded guilty to a racketeering conspiracy charge (the law written for organised crime) in September 2026. One of the callers was Veer Chetal, then 19, a former Rutgers University student whose parents lived in Danbury, Connecticut. Chetal pleaded guilty to fraud and money laundering conspiracy in a case that was kept sealed until June 2025, agreed to testify against others, and handed over about $39 million in crypto to investigators.

The crew did not keep quiet. Members spent millions on supercars, rented mansions, watches and nightclubs. That kind of spending told other criminals exactly who had the money.

The first crew: St. Louis

According to the US Attorney's Office for the District of Connecticut, people who were coordinating a robbery recruited three men from St. Louis: Martel Williams, Sedric Louis, 32, and John Davis, 34. The plan was to force their way into the family's home in Danbury, threaten the son, and make him transfer the stolen crypto to accounts controlled by the organisers. With bitcoin, a robbery does not need a safe to crack. It needs one person, under threat, to press send.

Between 21 and 24 August 2024, the men travelled to Connecticut. They rented cars and gathered supplies: air rifles, walkie-talkies and, by Williams' own admission, a laptop. For two days they followed the son and his parents. Then they gave up. Prosecutors say they believed the home's security cameras had filmed them, and they were frustrated by the plan and by poor communication with the people running it. They drove home.

Williams was named in a second superseding indictment (an updated charge sheet) returned by a grand jury in New Haven on 22 May 2026. He appeared in court on 17 July 2026, pleaded not guilty and was released on bond. On 26 October he changed that plea to guilty. Louis and Davis were arrested on 25 June 2026 and have been held in custody since. Both pleaded not guilty on 30 July 2026. They are charged, not convicted, and are presumed innocent unless proven guilty.

The second crew: Florida

The organisers did not give up when the St. Louis men left. A second crew, six men from Florida, arrived. On the afternoon of 25 August 2024, in broad daylight on a Danbury street, one of them rammed the back of the parents' Lamborghini Urus, a luxury SUV. Others pulled up in a van, dragged the couple out, beat them and forced them into the van, where they were tied up. Reports say a baseball bat was used.

The plan fell apart within minutes. Witnesses called the police, and according to court records reported by the Associated Press, an off-duty FBI agent happened to be driving past. Danbury police chased the van and arrested all six men the same day. The parents were found bound and injured. They have never been charged with anything; Crypto Media Zone does not name them. The father reportedly lost his job at a major bank over the publicity.

All six Florida men have since pleaded guilty to kidnapping and carjacking offences.

The brothers behind it

Prosecutors say the robbery was organised by two brothers. Adam Iza, a self-styled crypto mogul from Los Angeles who called himself "The Godfather", used phones and encrypted messaging apps to direct the kidnappers, arranged logistics and paid for it. He pleaded guilty on 1 June 2026 and on 9 September 2026 was sentenced in Hartford to 180 months, 15 years, in federal prison. Iza had already pleaded guilty in a separate California case, which included paying Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies to work for him; that case added a further sentence, to run at the same time.

His brother, Saif Faiq, 22, also of St. Louis, pleaded guilty to the same robbery conspiracy on 8 June 2026. Prosecutors say Faiq recruited people for the job, travelled to Connecticut and helped watch the family. That recruiting is how three men from Missouri ended up outside a house in Connecticut.

Williams is the latest to admit his part. The investigation was run by the FBI's New Haven Violent Crimes Task Force, with FBI offices in Los Angeles and St. Louis and the Danbury Police Department. Assistant US Attorneys Karen L. Peck and Stephanie T. Levick are prosecuting, under US Attorney David X. Sullivan.

Why this keeps happening

Robberies aimed at crypto owners are known in the industry as wrench attacks, after the joke that the cheapest way to break the strongest password is to threaten its owner with a wrench. They have spread from France to Canada to Britain, and they share one feature with Danbury: the people hurt are often relatives who never owned the coins. The parents in this case were not part of the theft. They were simply the easiest way to reach their son.

The stolen money made the family a target the moment the crew began showing it off. Two separate gangs were sent after the same house within one week. The first left because it feared a camera. The second was caught because strangers on a street picked up their phones.