Prisoner Jailed for 8 Years Over $2.7M Crypto Theft Plot Run From His Cell

A man who directed an attempted £2 million ($2.7 million) cryptocurrency theft from his prison cell has been jailed for eight years by Scotland's High Court of Justiciary.

Robert Barr, 29, pleaded guilty along with Sean Favier, 26, and Iain Doyle, 37, to being involved in serious organised crime as part of the attempted theft, according to a sentencing statement published by Scotland's Judicial Office on Tuesday. Lord Cubie sentenced Favier to four years and Doyle to five years at the High Court in Glasgow.

"This was a crime which married 21st century computer sophistication with old fashioned housebreaking in an audacious attempt to steal cryptocurrency worth up to £2 million pounds," Lord Cubie said.

The plan, according to the court's account, was for Favier and Doyle to get into the victims' home in Midlothian, near Edinburgh, and make the man go onto his computer and download AnyDesk, a remote-access program. That would let Barr, who was serving a 21-month sentence at HMP Edinburgh for fraud, take control of the computer from prison and transfer the crypto to wallets he controlled.

The two men went to the house at around 11:30 p.m. on April 17, 2024, but the couple saw them on their doorbell camera and refused to let them in. One of the men looked into the lens and asked whether there was a camera in front of him before the pair left, the BBC reported.



Months of planning

The attempt followed months of preparation, including identifying the victim as a crypto holder, gathering images of the house and reconnaissance, all of which investigators pieced together from Barr's phone after it was seized in June 2024, the judge said. Messages on the phone "plainly contemplated threats and/or violence," he added.

The victim was a co-founder of a crypto startup who did not advertise his holdings, but followed mostly crypto-related accounts on social media, according to the BBC. Barr's associates had already burgled the house in January 2024 and taken a crypto wallet, but could not access the funds without its PIN, the court heard.

Prosecutors described Barr as a "sophisticated cybercriminal" able to "orchestrate a level of criminality rarely seen within mainstream investigations." He had a previous conviction for a crypto fraud, and organised the new offence while in prison "using plainly illicit means of being in contact or online," Lord Cubie said, calling those materially aggravating factors.