Ex-LAPD officer gets life plus 15 years over $350K bitcoin robbery

Former Los Angeles Police Department officer Eric Halem has been sentenced to life plus 15 years for kidnapping and robbery — in the early hours of December 28, 2024, he and three accomplices broke into a Koreatown high-rise wearing vests identifying them as police.

According to investigators, the men arrived in a Range Rover and a Lamborghini Urus, entered the building using an access code around 2:30 a.m., and handcuffed the people inside the apartment. The main victim named in court was a 17-year-old identified as Daniel — under threat of death, he was forced to hand over a hard drive holding roughly $350,000 in bitcoin. The crew also took cash and jewelry.

There could've been no other conclusion

That's how Judge Mildred Escobedo of the Los Angeles County Superior Court described Halem's motive on Tuesday, August 5, 2026, calling it "sheer and utter greed." A jury had convicted Halem back in March 2026 after a two-week trial; the judge also rejected a late defense bid for a new trial before handing down the sentence.

• Amount stolen: roughly $350,000 in bitcoin, taken via a stolen hard drive holding the keys
• Sentence: life plus 15 years, served concurrently; parole eligibility after 7 years
• Halem's three co-defendants have not yet stood trial

Halem, 38, left the LAPD roughly two years before the robbery after 13 years of service, but remained a reserve officer at the time of the crime. He also faces separate pending charges for insurance fraud and another alleged robbery connected to crypto.

The case is a rare but telling reminder that self-custody risk isn't limited to software exploits or phishing: we previously covered how CZ said exchanges are statistically safer than self-custody, citing data on lost coins, and how a fourth wave of the Coldcard hardware wallet exploit pushed losses toward $114 million. Physical violence and outright coercion to hand over wallet access is another item on the same list of risks that holders of large crypto sums increasingly have to factor into their own security model.

Nothing here should be taken as financial advice — just information to consider.