Toronto: Seven Charged, Three of Them Soldiers, Over a Crypto Kidnapping at Gunpoint

On Saturday 25 July 2026, a man was walking towards his car near Finch Avenue East and Bayview Avenue, in the North York district of Toronto. Before he reached it, he was taken at gunpoint, handcuffed, held in a car and beaten. His captors wanted two things: his cryptocurrency, and access to the security systems of his business. He owned a crypto exchange. When they let him go, it was with a warning not to call the police.

The abduction was reported anyway. Eleven weeks later, on Wednesday 14 October, the Toronto Police Service announced that seven men had been charged with 82 offences between them, including kidnapping for ransom, forcible confinement, gun crimes and drug trafficking. Three of the seven are serving members of the Canadian Armed Forces. Searches had turned up about 2,500 rounds of ammunition that, police say, had been stolen from the military, which had not reported them missing.

Nobody has been convicted. Every allegation below is unproven, and each of the accused is presumed innocent.

The abduction

Police have not named the victim or his exchange. An exchange is the crypto version of a stockbroker or a bureau de change: it lets customers swap dollars for bitcoin and back, and it holds large amounts of digital money on their behalf. That makes its owner an obvious target. "The victim was allegedly targeted because of his access to cryptocurrency assets," Chief Superintendent Joe Matthews of the force's detective operations told reporters.

According to police, the suspects tried to get into the man's crypto holdings and his "business-related security systems" while he was held. Police have not said how much was demanded, whether any money moved, or how long he was held. They said he suffered minor injuries and declined to give more detail while the cases are before the courts.

The reason criminals bother with a kidnapping is simple. A bank transfer made under duress can be stopped or reversed. A crypto transfer, once sent, usually cannot. Coins are controlled by a private key, a secret code that works like the combination to a safe, and whoever has the code can move the money anywhere in minutes. The industry calls this kind of crime a wrench attack, after a 2009 xkcd cartoon in which a thug skips the computer hacking and simply beats the password out of its owner with a $5 wrench.

Seven arrests, three soldiers

The first arrests came fast. Within 24 hours police had identified a suspect vehicle, and on 26 July they arrested Saiefeddine Adem, 22, and Raheem Bishop-Jackson, 24. On 11 August they arrested Talarambage Sachintha Fernando, 22, James Moreau, 29, and Christian Darbandi, 39. On 24 September they arrested Jack Miley, 24, and Suhaib Alekozai, 39. All but one of the seven is charged with kidnapping for ransom.

Fernando, Moreau and Miley are army reservists, part-time soldiers who train on weekends and can be called up for operations. Fernando and Moreau hold the rank of bombardier, the artillery equivalent of a corporal, in the 7th Toronto Regiment, a reserve artillery unit of 32 Canadian Brigade based at Moss Park Armoury on Queen Street East. Miley is a master bombardier. The Department of National Defence (DND) told The Canadian Press all three belong to the 7th Toronto Regiment; CBC News reported police saying Miley is in a different regiment.

DND gave their records. Moreau enrolled as a reservist in March 2018 and deployed in 2020 on Operation Laser, the military's pandemic response, which sent troops into care homes. Fernando enrolled in January 2020 and has never deployed. Miley enrolled in 2025 and deployed the same year on Operation Reassurance, Canada's NATO mission in Eastern Europe meant to deter Russia.

Fernando faces 20 charges, the most of any accused, most of them gun offences, according to The Canadian Press. He and Moreau were first charged with a combined 49 offences, including kidnapping for ransom, forcible confinement, unauthorised possession of a firearm in a motor vehicle, using a firearm while committing an indictable offence, and mischief. Moreau also faces counts of possessing a prohibited device, possessing property obtained by crime, careless storage of ammunition and two counts of possession for the purpose of trafficking. Miley faces seven charges, including kidnapping for ransom with a firearm and forcible confinement, CBC reported.

"These are highly trained individuals with access to firearms and that creates a lot of concern for not only our community but our officers," Matthews said. Police Chief Myron Demkiw put it more bluntly: "Whether you are a member of the military or a member of a police service or a public official, no one is above the law."

The arsenal

What started as a kidnapping case turned into a weapons and drugs inquiry. Searches of homes and vehicles across the Greater Toronto Area found more than 2,700 rounds of ammunition, a shotgun, three 9mm handguns (two of them built on 3D-printed receivers, the main body of a gun, made at home on a plastic printer), two silencers and 10 over-capacity magazines, according to police. Officers also found GPS tracking devices, handcuffs, portable radios, a crossbow with arrows, Canadian cash, and large amounts of methamphetamine and cocaine.

About 2,500 of the rounds and five of the magazines were traced to the Canadian Armed Forces. About half of the rounds were blanks, The Canadian Press reported. Matthews said the military had not reported the ammunition stolen before police seized it, but confirmed afterwards that it was theirs. Police have not said how it left military stores, and nothing published so far shows that military weapons were used in the abduction itself.

Police say they have found no link to a larger organised crime group, although DND's first statement on 5 October described the charges as related to organised crime. Investigators are still working out how the seven men knew each other. "We're still trying to determine how all of them fit together in this puzzle," Matthews said. Demkiw said officers were examining seized phones and computers, but were "often hampered by encryption".

Toronto has been here before

The city has a record. In December 2022 Aiden Pleterski, the self-styled "Crypto King" of Whitby, Ontario, was abducted and beaten for days by men seeking a ransom. Five men were charged, one of them an investor who said he had lost about C$740,000 with Pleterski, CBC reported. One of them, Deren Akyeam-Pong, later pleaded guilty to nine charges including kidnapping. On 6 November 2024 Dean Skurka, chief executive of the Toronto crypto platform WonderFi, was forced into a vehicle during rush hour near University Avenue and Richmond Street West. He was found unhurt in Etobicoke's Centennial Park after a ransom of about C$1 million was reportedly paid, and WonderFi later disclosed C$3.6 million spent on the ransom and on security upgrades. North of the city, Keyron Moore was sentenced in August 2025 to 13 years for a 2022 abduction from a Thornhill plaza in which the captors demanded $1 million in bitcoin.

A worldwide trade

Jameson Lopp, chief security officer at the bitcoin custody firm Casa, keeps a public list of physical attacks on crypto holders going back to 2014. As updated on 16 October 2026, it held 704 incidents: 162 dated 2025 and 124 so far in 2026. The Toronto case is on it. At least ten of the entries since March 2024 are in Canada.

©CMZ chart. Data: Jameson Lopp's list of physical bitcoin attacks

The analytics firm Chainalysis counted 46 violent attacks on crypto holders worldwide in the first half of 2026, up from 40 a year earlier, with more than $30 million taken. Only 12 of the 46 ended in a payment. The security firm CertiK verified 52 attacks in the same period, against 39 a year earlier, and put the money at stake, including ransom demands, at $124.1 million. France is the centre of it: 33 of CertiK's 52 cases, and 88 people charged by French prosecutors in April 2026 alone, a wave that began with the January 2025 kidnapping of David Balland, co-founder of the wallet maker Ledger.