The Garcia brothers in Texas were sentenced to a combined total of more than 30 years in prison for holding a family at gunpoint and extorting more than $8 million in crypto assets.
A U.S. federal court has handed down lengthy sentences to two brothers in Texas for breaking into a home, holding people hostage, and extorting crypto assets in Minnesota, in one of the clearest prosecutions to date of a “wrench attack.”
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, Raymond Christian Garcia and Isiah Angelo Garcia, both of Waller, Texas, were sentenced by U.S. District Judge Donovan Frank in St. Paul on Thursday to 180 and 186 months in prison, respectively—equivalent to 15 years and 15 and a half years. Both pleaded guilty in June.
Court records show that the two men traveled from Texas to Grant, Minnesota. On September 19, 2025, they broke into the victim’s home, zip-tied family members, and held them at gunpoint for more than nine hours while forcing the father to provide access to his cryptocurrency accounts.
When the amount transferred fell short of what they wanted, the two men forced the father to drive one of the brothers to the family’s cabin in northern Minnesota to retrieve more hardware wallets and continue transferring funds. In total, the victim was forced to transfer more than $8 million. The brothers fled after the victim’s son called 911 and were later arrested near Houston.
U.S. Attorney Daniel Rosen described the crime as a brazen, calculated act of violence against the victim and his family. Christopher Dotson of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) emphasized that the two men had violated the sanctity of the home in an act driven by violence and greed.
A rise in “wrench attacks”
Unlike cyberattacks targeting exchanges or digital wallets, “wrench attacks” rely on direct physical force to make cryptocurrency holders transfer their assets themselves. This method exploits a fundamental feature of cryptocurrency: once a victim is forced to sign a transaction, funds can leave a wallet almost instantly, making control of the private key a vulnerability that lies beyond every layer of technical security.
Such incidents have surged alongside rising cryptocurrency prices. Chainalysis recorded 46 violent incidents in the first half of 2026, with more than $30 million stolen, while CertiK estimated even greater losses. The phenomenon is not limited to the United States: recently, France recorded a kidnapping in which a worker’s children were taken hostage, while in the UK, perpetrators in a home invasion were sentenced to prison.
The sentences handed to the Garcia brothers are seen as one of the clearest signs yet that U.S. courts are treating the violent extortion of cryptocurrency as a serious violent crime, rather than a variation of financial crime. For large-scale cryptocurrency holders, the case is also a reminder that physical security risks are increasingly accompanying cybersecurity risks.