A Hong Kong man was sentenced to seven years in prison by a Canadian court for taking part in a brazen home invasion with three others — robbing a British Columbia couple of $1.6 million worth of Bitcoin after a 13-hour ordeal during which they sexually assaulted and tortured them.
Tsz Wing Boaz Chan was sentenced on Thursday for what a British Columbia judge called “an elaborately planned offense that involved “extreme violence over a very long period, with enormous financial consequences, on top of the profound emotional impact it will continue to have on the victims.”
On the evening of April 27 of last year, the assailants pulled up to the home in Port Moody, BC, in a rented Honda Odyssey that was first spotted on CCTV around 5:28 p.m.
By 6:00 p.m., the van returned and four men — including Tsz Wing Boaz Chan — were seen exiting the vehicle.
Two of the intruders, dressed in fake Canada Post mailman uniforms, knocked on the door of the Canadian couple and gained entry to the home, allowing the remaining attackers inside.
What followed was a 13.5-hour ordeal in which the family was zip-tied, beaten, waterboarded sexually assaulted and threatened while the men drained roughly US$1.6 million from their cryptocurrency accounts.
The assailants are said to have targeted the family because the husband “boasted and exaggerated about his success with cryptocurrency investments” and were well-known in the Chinese expat community in British Columbia, according to court documents.
Both the husband and wife, whose identities have remained anonymous, were subjected to waterboarding — a form of torture where water is poured over a wet cloth covering the face and breathing passages, causing the sensation of drowning.
At one point, the men waterboarded the wife while her husband was forced to watch. According to court documents, he was told that his wife would die if he did not divulge the passwords to his cryptocurrency accounts.
The court documents also state that the husband, identified as “WG,” was stripped naked and beaten several times throughout the night with an object — suffering significant trauma to his legs and chest.
The assailants threatened to cut off WG’s genitals if he did not provide them with access to his accounts.
The court papers also alleged that the assailants forced the couple’s young daughter, whose age has not been specified, to simulate noises so as to “sound horny and moan” in order to make her parents think she was being sexually assaulted.
According to court documents, a man speaking over the phone with a voice filter instructed the young daughter to make sounds that would make her father think she was being raped.
The assailants also forced her to strip naked and touch herself while filming her. They then threatened to post the video on her and her parents’ social media accounts, according to court documents.
Eventually, the man gave the attackers access to his cryptocurrency accounts, but they “told him it was not enough, as they wanted 200 bitcoins,” according to court documents.
The assailants eventually lowered the demand to 100 bitcoins, though ultimately they withdrew $1.6 million worth of the digital assets — “which effectively drained their accounts,” the legal filing stated.
At about 8:00 a.m. on April 28, the family’s daughter escaped and called 911 from a nearby friend’s home.
Around the same time, CCTV captured three of the men, including Chan, fleeing the area in the Honda Odyssey.
Police received the wellness-check call at 8:00 a.m. and arrived at the house roughly 30 minutes later, finding the parents bound and injured inside. WG, the husband, emerged from the home naked from the waist down with his hands tied behind his back.
The assailants meticulously planned the attack — having conducted surveillance and planted cameras around the property in order to gather detailed intelligence on the family’s cryptocurrency holdings and daily routines.
Before fleeing, the attackers attempted to destroy evidence by soaking the family’s electronics in a bathtub filled with water and bleach, according to court documents.
The Post has sought comment from Chan’s attorney.
