A St. Louis man has admitted his part in a violent scheme to steal bitcoin from a Connecticut family. Martel Williams, 27, pleaded guilty Monday in federal court in Hartford to conspiracy to interfere with commerce by robbery, commonly called Hobbs Act robbery.
The charge carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. U.S. Attorney David X. Sullivan announced the plea.
The plot began in August 2024. Prosecutors say the people coordinating the attack wanted bitcoin belonging to a man who had taken part in a theft worth hundreds of millions of dollars. To get it, they recruited Williams and two associates from St. Louis.
The crew was supposed to force its way into the target’s home, threaten him, and demand that he move the cryptocurrency into accounts the conspirators controlled.
Williams and others traveled to Connecticut between August 21 and August 24, 2024. They rented vehicles and gathered supplies, including air rifles, walkie-talkies, and a laptop computer. For two days, they stalked the target and his parents, waiting for an opening to get inside the house.
Cameras, frustration, and a failed bitcoin break-in
The opening never came. Williams and his associates feared they had been captured on home security cameras. They also grew frustrated with the plan and with a lack of communication from their coordinators. They left Connecticut without carrying out the job.
Shortly afterward, a second crew of six men from Florida arrived to carry out the scheme again. On August 25, 2024, Danbury police arrested those six men after a violent carjacking. The men beat and kidnapped two people inside the vehicle. Those two victims were the parents of the target.
Local outlets have tied the target to a bitcoin theft in the range of $230 million to $245 million, though the exact figure varies from report to report. The federal case itself centers on the attempted robbery, not the original theft.
Federal agents arrested Williams on July 17, 2026. He remains free pending sentencing, and no sentencing date has been set. The FBI New Haven Violent Crimes Task Force, FBI Los Angeles, FBI St. Louis, and the Danbury Police Department investigated the case. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Karen L. Peck and Stephanie T. Levick prosecuted it.
Other defendants in the Danbury case have also pleaded guilty, according to local reporting.
Poetic bitcoin justice
Earlier this month, a scammer who had stolen about 60 bitcoin (roughly $4.8 million) through a fake-review task scam lost it all when thieves emptied three Ledger addresses where the scammer had moved the proceeds on October 9.
Blockchain analysts at Chainalysis said the transfers went into one wallet reported as stolen, while the wider Ledger incident, in which a criminal group allegedly implanted seed-phrase-reading devices sold through Malaysian reseller CryptoBilis, may have drained about $86 million. Ledger said it was working with law enforcement and has confirmed no other vendors were targeted, following a July attack on Coldcard that cost users close to $120 million through a firmware bug.
