Four teenagers have been charged after an OnlyFans streamer was ordered to hand over her crypto at gunpoint.

Kaitlyn Siragusa, a popular influencer also known as Amouranth, was targeted at her home in Texas earlier this month. Three armed assailants had broken into her bedroom, hit her repeatedly with a pistol, and ordered her to transfer digital assets.

She escorted them to another part of her Houston property where her husband fired a gun, and the robbers fled the scene.

Demarcus Morris Jr., who is 17 years old, has been charged with aggravated kidnapping and aggravated robbery with a deadly weapon. Dylan Nesho Campbell, 18, and Bryan Anthony Salazar Guerrero, 19, face the same charges.

Harris County District Clerk’s Office says an unidentified 16-year-old is also a suspect in the case. Two of the teenagers remain in custody, while a third has posted a bond of $100,000.

Back in November, Siragusa had posted a picture of her posing in lingerie on X, along with the caption: “Help! Do I sell or hold my BTC?”

A screenshot of her Coinbase account showed she had 211 BTC in her wallet—worth about $17.6 million at current market rates.

In an interview with FOX 26 Houston, Siragusa revealed that she was on the phone to her husband, who was in a separate part of their property, throughout the ordeal.

“They shot down my door. These three guys came into my room, turned all the lights on and had the gun pointed at me,” she said. “They cornered me into a chair in my room and were interrogating me—asking me ‘where’s the crypto?’ over and over.”

Dramatic footage shows Siragusa leading the gunmen to her husband, supposedly to hand over her hardware wallet.

The attackers left the scene empty-handed, with one shouting “I got shot” as they fled on foot.

Siragusa recently revealed that the men only managed to take her MacBook, which was later traced to the same hospital where she had been treated for her injuries.

“I may have seen the one who was shot while I was being discharged,” she wrote.

Edited by Stacy Elliott.

The UK Court of Appeals has rejected a Wales man’s request to excavate a landfill where he believes his hard drive holding $676 million in Bitcoin was dumped more than a decade ago. 

James Howells posted Friday on Linkedin a screenshot of the appeals court’s ruling, which is final. The software engineer, who mined the lost Bitcoin in 2009, has waged a long legal battle to gain access to the landfill where he believes his tokens may be buried, and he has even considered purchasing the waste site. 

But having exhausted all his options for legal recourse through the U.K. court system, Howells now plans to bring his case to the European Courts of Human Rights. 

“The Great British Injustice System strikes again… Moral of the Story: The state always protects the state,” Howells wrote in his Linkedin post. “Next stop: ECHR.” 

Howells lost his hard drive containing the keys to 8,000 Bitcoin in 2013, when his former partner tossed out the device. Bitcoin’s price peaked that year at roughly $1,130, CoinGecko data shows. 

Since then, the value of those tossed tokens has grown astronomically, however. Bitcoin was trading at $84,500 as of publication time, or more than 7000% higher than its highest price in 2013. 

Howells is one of many early Bitcoin believers whose holdings have grown to be worth a life-changing fortune. But his case also underscores a common reality for many crypto holders—the difficulties of custodying one’s own cryptocurrencies. 

In a letter to Howells, Rt. Hon. Lord Justice Nugee of the U.K. Court of Appeals said he rejected the Bitcoin holder’s appeal because it did not have “any real prospect of success.” 

Howells refuted the judge’s argument in a Friday statement, which he shared with Decrypt. 

“The British establishment wants to sweep this under the carpet, and I will not let them,” he said. “It will not go away—no matter how long it takes!”

Although Howells implied he has a lot of time to fight his case, time to dig up his hard drive is running out. 

A local council that oversees the Welsh landfill is expected to shutter the site, which is nearing maximum capacity, in the 2025-26 financial year, the council’s draft budget shows. 

Crypto exchange Coinbase has scored another major victory in its legal battles, as U.S. state Vermont dropped its case against the exchange over its staking services. 

Coinbase’s Chief Legal Officer, Paul Grewal, celebrated Vermont’s decision, calling it a sign of “progress.” 

“As we have always said: staking services are not securities,” he wrote on X. “We applaud Vermont for embracing progress and providing clarity for its citizens who own digital assets.” 

Grewal went on to urge other states still pursuing similar actions to “take a page from Vermont’s playbook.”

The decision follows the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) decision to dismiss its own case against Coinbase just weeks earlier, pointing to a shift in the regulatory aspects for the crypto industry under President Donald Trump’s administration.

The formation of the new SEC task force to “provide guidance for the promulgation of rules regarding the regulation of crypto products and services” was cited as a pivotal factor in Vermont’s decision to rescind its case against Coinbase.

“In light of the dismissal of the Federal Action and likelihood of new federal regulatory guidance, the Division believes it would be most efficient and in the best interests of justice to rescind the pending Show Cause Order, without prejudice,” a Thursday filing reads.

The legal troubles between Coinbase and state regulators date back to June 2023, when Vermont, along with 10 other states, issued a “show cause order” accusing the exchange of violating securities laws by offering staking services without proper registration. 

The 11 states argued that Coinbase’s staking services qualified as unregistered securities, prompting legal action to halt the practice in certain jurisdictions.

A “show cause order” is a legal directive requiring a party to explain why a court should not take a specific action, in this case, halting Coinbase’s staking services.

The legal actions were launched shortly after the SEC filed its own case against Coinbase, accusing the exchange of operating as an unregistered exchange, broker, and clearing agency.

The SEC, under its new acting chair, Mark Uyeda, has adopted a more lenient stance on enforcement compared to its previous leadership under Gary Gensler. 

Following the change, the SEC has dropped multiple lawsuits against crypto companies, notably Binance, Kraken, and OpenSea, among others.

Edited by Sebastian Sinclair