CONFESSIONS OF A TEENAGE CRYPTO KINGPIN

How 'Baby Al Capone' pulled off a $23.8 million crypto heist and has been paying the price ever since

- ALEX MORRIS

THE BREAK-IN HAPPENED

around 4 a.m., on a leafy street in the otherwise sleepy and sleeping village of Irvington, New York. Four men wearing ski masks and gloves, armed with knives, rope, brass knuckles, and a fake 9 mm, crept around the back of the large suburban home, their ghostly forms captured by its security-camera footage. As would later be alleged in court proceedings, the rope was intended to tie up the family. The knife was to torture them until the oldest son told them what they wanted to know. The gun was for show: A fake gun can evoke the same amount of fear as a real one but leads to lesser charges. These men knew what they were doing. And they apparently knew exactly what they wanted to find.

A bedroom community 20 miles up the Hudson River from New York City, Irvington’s whole point is to be a place of calm, not calamity, a place where white-collar families can disperse themselves sparsely in well-appointed homes with river vistas and two-car garages. There are good public schools. There is a historic Main Street that runs up from the water, a parade of American flags suspended from buildings that look as though they were plucked from a Christmas village. The town is named for former resident Washington Irving, whose Rip Van Winkle is cast in bronze, forever waking from his long slumber in the yard beside Town Hall, oblivious to the soccer moms in Lululemon and the teenagers in Ivy League sweatshirts who saunter by throughout the day. Beyond Main Street, tended lawns extend up into the hills, deliberately at a peaceful remove from the crime and grime of urban life.