TechFlow News, March 3: According to The Block, a jury at the Los Angeles County Superior Court found 38-year-old former Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) officer Eric Halem guilty of kidnapping and robbery on Monday for stealing $350,000 worth of Bitcoin from a 17-year-old boy in 2024.
Case details show that Halem, along with three other men, impersonated police officers and entered the victim’s high-rise apartment in Koreatown, threatening to kill the teenager to force him to surrender a hard drive containing the Bitcoin. The suspects wore police vests and used an access code provided by a co-conspirator to enter the apartment, then restrained the victim and his girlfriend using handcuffs issued by the LAPD.
Halem served with the LAPD for 13 years before resigning in 2022; at the time of the crime, he was still serving as a reserve officer. He is scheduled to be sentenced on March 31. The other co-defendants have not yet stood trial; prosecutors stated that one of them is linked to the so-called “Israeli mafia.”
