A night out in London took a dark turn for an Oregon tech whiz who claimed he was drugged by a bogus Uber driver who later drained $123,000 from his crypto accounts. <\/p>\n
Jacob Irwin-Cline, 30, was on a two-day layover en route to visit family in Spain when he woke up disoriented and financially devastated after getting into what he believed was his rideshare outside a Soho nightclub around 1:30 a.m. on May 9, MyLondon reported.<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cI lost $123,000 dollars in crypto and assets,\u201d Irwin-Cline, a former software engineer, told the British outlet of the terrifying ordeal.<\/p>\n Jacob Irwin-Cline, 30, said he was drugged by a faux Uber driver who stole thousands in crypto. Tony Kershaw \/ SWNS<\/p>\n \u201cThey took the majority of my wealth.\u201d<\/p>\n The unsuspecting crypto investor said he hopped into the car \u2014 without double-checking the model or license plate \u2014 after the \u201csuper chill\u201d driver, who seemed to match the Uber profile, called out his name.<\/p>\n The Portland man then accepted a cigarette from the driver and soon began feeling unusually dazed and drowsy \u2014 later suspecting it had been laced with a powerful sedative known as scopolamine, the outlet reported.<\/p>\n \u201cI remember being really docile,\u201d Irwin-Cline recounted, adding that he was in a foggy, semi-conscious state when he handed his phone and passcodes over to the phony chauffeur, who later dumped him in a \u201cweird part\u201d of London and struck him with the car before speeding off.<\/p>\n Cline said the brazen theft happened after a night out in London on May 9. Jacob Irwin-Cline \/ SWNS<\/p>\n \u201cI vaguely remember going through applications a bit. He got a couple of passkeys from me to enter applications. There was definitely some sort of drug in the cigarette. I passed out for what I assumed to be 20 to 30 minutes.\u201d<\/p>\n The techie, without his phone, stumbled back to his hostel only to discover that his laptop had been remotely wiped and he was locked out of his financial accounts. When Irwin-Cline regained access, he was shocked to find that the large sum had vanished, the outlet reported. <\/p>\n He claimed the rideshare driver gave him a drug-laced cigarette before swiping his phone and passcodes. REUTERS<\/p>\n Irwin-Cline, who reported the chilling incident to British police, has since accepted that the stolen funds are gone for good.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s virtually impossible to get that money back unless some weird miracle happened \u2014 taking down that ring and getting these wallets back,\u201d he explained, sharing his concern for other potential victims.<\/p>\n \u201cIt sucks man. I\u2019m alive, and that\u2019s honestly \u2014 I was not stoked at first \u2014 but that\u2019s definitely the more important thing. Money will come and go. It\u2019s just really strange. I\u2019m just worried guys will keep getting away with it. He probably made enough money that he will not have to do this again for a while.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s virtually impossible to get that money back,\u201d Cline said. Tony Kershaw \/ SWNS<\/p>\n The brazen heist transpired just days after Kentucky crypto king John Woeltz<\/a> allegedly kidnapped and tortured by wealthy Italian trader Michael Valentino Teofrasto Carturan for his Bitcoin password at a ritzy townhouse in Manhattan.<\/p>\n The Italian national, who is reportedly worth $30 million, was lured to the Big Apple pad on May 6 and held captive while his tormentors unleashed a litany of horrific tortures, according to sources.<\/p>\n Carturan was tied to a chair and tasered while his feet were in a bucket of water, urinated on, pistol-whipped and had his arms and legs cut with a chainsaw before he was finally able to escape Friday<\/a> when his captors were distracted, law-enforcement sources said.<\/p>\n Police have arrested three people<\/a>, including Woeltz<\/a>, allegedly connected to the vicious ordeal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A night out in London took a dark turn for an Oregon tech whiz who claimed he was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":134480,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7757],"tags":[748,188,31212,393,4884,59086,257,20257,15600,16,15,263],"class_list":{"0":"post-134479","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-london","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-crime","10":"tag-cryptocurrency","11":"tag-england","12":"tag-great-britain","13":"tag-kidnappings","14":"tag-london","15":"tag-oregon","16":"tag-uber","17":"tag-uk","18":"tag-united-kingdom","19":"tag-world-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114576784298339040","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134479"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134479\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/134480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}