Raymond Christian Garcia and Isiah Angelo Garcia, originating from Waller, Texas, received prison sentences of 180 months and 186 months respectively for the armed theft of digital assets and the abduction of a household in Grant, Minnesota.
United States District Judge Donovan W. Frank delivered the sentences on Thursday, as noted in a press release issued on Friday. Both individuals had previously entered guilty pleas in June.
Judicial records indicate that on September 19, 2025, the siblings made the trip from Texas to Minnesota, where they targeted Victim 1 and his relatives inside their residence using firearms. They restrained the household members with zip ties while threatening them with weapons, detaining them for over nine hours while pressing for entry into Victim 1’s digital currency wallets.
Because the duo did not acquire the anticipated quantity of digital coins initially, they compelled Victim 1 to travel to a retreat located in northern Minnesota, where they extracted further crypto assets from alternate hardware tools, accumulating a cumulative sum exceeding $8 million.
The perpetrators escaped following an emergency 911 call placed by the victim’s son, leading law enforcement officers to track down and apprehend them close to Houston.
Brothers terrorized family at gunpoint
Christopher D. Dotson, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI Minneapolis Field Office, remarked that Raymond and Isiah Garcia breached a residential sanctuary, kidnapped an individual, held a household hostage under firearm threat for hours, and caused widespread distress in a community through a blatant display of violence and avarice.
In July, a report highlighted that residential break-ins evolved into the most frequent category of physical crypto extortion threats throughout the initial six months of 2026, climbing to 20 publicly documented occurrences compared to just one occurrence during the prior year, based on findings from blockchain security enterprise CertiK.
CertiK stated in July that it confirmed 52 physical extortion cases globally during the first half of 2026, marking a 33% increase from the 39 cases recorded throughout the corresponding timeframe in 2025. Furthermore, abduction cases climbed from 12 to 16.
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Originally published at https://cointelegraph.com/news/texas-brothers-sentenced-to-15-years-in-prison-for-armed-crypto-robbery-kidnapping?utm_source=rss_feed&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss_partner_inbound.
