Sergey Kuzmin, the deputy mayor of Kharkiv, Ukraine, has a 21-year-old son, Danila Kuzmin, who, during his studies in Vienna, Austria, revealed to a fellow Ukrainian student that his father possesses a large amount of cryptocurrency assets. Subsequently, he was kidnapped by that 19-year-old classmate (the stepson of the Ukrainian ambassador to Bulgaria) and a 45-year-old accomplice.

The suspects tortured him for several hours in the hotel's underground parking lot, forcing him to disclose the password to his cryptocurrency wallet. After obtaining it, they stuffed him into a vehicle, doused it with gasoline, and burned it to destroy the evidence (80% of the body was burned).