An American tourist claims he was drugged and abducted by a fake Uber driver, who then drained $123,000 from his crypto accounts after a night out in London. Jacob Irwin-Cline, 30, says he built his wealth after investing in Bitcoin as a teenager, but now thinks there is a ‘less than one per cent chance’ he will be able to get any of the money back, even with the help of the FBI’s cybercrime team.
The former software developer from Portland, Oregon, was in the UK on a two-day layover to see his parents in Spain, when he went out to The Roxy on Rathbone Place in Soho, drinking what, he recalls, were around three whiskey sours before deciding to head back to his hostel at around 1.30am on Friday, May 9. After calling an Uber using the app on his phone, he said goodbye to friends and left.
Outside the basement cocktail bar, Jacob recalls a private hire driver flagging him down, calling out the alias Jacob has saved as his name in the app. Jacob also told MyLondon the driver, called Mohammed, looked like the man in the photo that showed up on his app, but he had no time to cross-reference the number plate, or make and model, of the car with the details appearing on his phone.
Having asked The Roxy for CCTV footage of this moment, by citing GDPR laws, Jacob now says it was a ‘dark sedan’ that pulled up, and not the Toyota Prius that was advertised on the Uber app. Unaware of this at the time, Jacob accepted the driver’s ‘abnormal’ offer to get in the front passenger seat, remembering: “The guy seemed super chill, super nice.”
But things took a turn when the driver offered Jacob a cigarette, which he now believes was spiked with a rare drug, usually confined to South America, that was once termed the ‘world’s scariest drug’ in a 2012 Vice documentary filmed in Colombia.“I said I stopped smoking, but he said ‘Oh c’mon’. I said ‘Sure, if you want to bond over a cigarette’,” Jacob told MyLondon.
After apparently passing out, falling in an out of consciousness, Jacob said: “I remember being really docile.” Jacob then claims the driver asked for his phone for directions, and his passcode.
“I vaguely remember going through applications a bit. He got a couple of passkeys from me to enter applications,” Jacob said, adding: “There was definitely some sort of drug in the cigarette. I passed out for what I assumed to be 20 to 30 minutes.”
When Jacob eventually ‘came to’ in ‘a weird part of London that looked more neighbourhood-y [sic]’, Jacob said he looked over and saw maps on his phone but no navigation. When the driver noticed him regaining consciousness, Jacob claims he immediately ‘slammed’ the brakes ‘going from 35mph to zero in the middle of the road’.
“He calmly asked me to get out the car and open the trunk,” Jacob alleged, “Under the influence of the drug, I did not think that was weird. I just asked why, and he said ‘Don’t ask’. As I was getting out, he drove off and hit half my body, scraping my leg up and I’m left there on the side of the road. I watched him drive away for 10 seconds, then realised my phone was gone and started to come back a bit.”
Jacob, who had a labral repair on his right hip around six months ago, said the ‘hit-and-run’ left him ‘crippled’ and ‘unable to walk’ for multiple days after the incident. Having reviewed the last location ping on his phone, it appears the incident happened near Childs Way in Golders Green, just off Finchley Road.
After a kind stranger ordered a taxi to take him back to Urbany Hostel on Prince’s Square in Bayswater, Jacob pulled out his laptop and found it had been ‘bricked’, meaning remotely wiped. He immediately set about trying to get back into his accounts, with help from a flatmate in America who assisted him through a digital backdoor using Jacob’s old Android phone.
Jacob told MyLondon he did not sleep for three days, only to find out everything was gone. “I lost $123,000 dollars in crypto and assets,” Jacob said, “They took the majority of my wealth.”
Could ‘Devil’s Breath’ be to blame?
Meanwhile, Jacob said he tried to get toxicology reports from the hospital and police, but no tests were ordered. Jacob believes the robbers might have used scopolamine – a powerful sedative known as ‘devil’s breath’ that makes victims blackout, and, according to some experts, also makes them unusually open to suggestion — including agreeing to hand over a wallet or reveal passwords.
The US Embassy in Colombia, where there have been security alerts about the drug, describes scopolamine as an ‘odorless, tasteless, memory-blocking substance used to incapacitate and rob unwary victims’, reports The New York Times. It is far more common in South America, where the drug is derived from the seeds of the native Borrachero tree and is sold recreationally as burundanga.
Jacob, who has a YouTube channel where he shares his travels, told MyLondon he is no stranger to official US Government warnings about the drug, having visited South America himself, but had never expected to encounter it, or anything like it, in Europe.
Though it is virtually unheard of in the UK, there was one high-profile case in London when dancer Adrian Murphy’s body was discovered at his Battersea flat in 2019. Mr Murphy died from an overdose of scopolamine, administered by murderers Diana Cristea, 19, with her partner Joel Osei, 25, who then used his details to attempt to buy £62,000 worth of diamonds from a jeweller in New York.
During the trial, it also emerged that the couple used the drug to rob victims after connecting with them on Grindr, a gay dating app. They were accused of poisoning a second man, who cannot be named. The prosecution said the drug is ‘popular with both robbers and rapists’, and derived its nickname ‘Devil’s Breath’ because it can be extremely difficult to trace with normal toxicology tests.
In 2015, there were also reports of a Chinese gang using the drug to carry out robberies in Paris – this time by blowing it in the target’s face or claiming it was a herbal medicine. At the time La Parisien newspaper said the scammers were targeting elderly victims who could be turned into ‘zombies’ by the substance, taken home, and then relieved of their cash and jewellery.
Jacob never got a toxicology test (though he did ask), and scopolamine, according to scientists, leaves the body in urine within 12 hours. Therefore, it would be impossible to prove that he had ingested the drug, or, by now, any other date-rape style of drug like GBL or Rohypnol, which have both featured as the drug of choice in high-profile robbery and murder convictions.
‘It was really organised’
Though Jacob has very little memory of his time in The Roxy, he said the club helpfully reviewed footage of him getting into the ‘dark sedan’ that took him away, which, he says, shows the correct car pulling up behind and waiting until Jacob is taken away. Jacob now believes he was lured into the wrong car – with the driver in control of an Uber account connected to the Prius, which was driven by another conspirator.
“It was really organised. They locked me out of all of it,” Jacob said, including the Uber app, which was one of the first things to be locked down. Jacob said his journey back to the hostel was cancelled before the alleged robbery took place, but Uber have kindly refunded him around £6 for the trip. “It was pretty wild to see,” he added, laughing at the amount.
Asked if criminals could have targeted him using his social media profiles, Jacob said it was unlikely because of the alias he uses on his Uber account: “I think they just got really lucky I had a bit of wealth put away.”
Jacob also shared screenshots with MyLondon that show the balance on his XRP coin wallet dropped from around $73,000 to less than $1,000 the night he was robbed, while his Bitcoin wallet dropped from $50,000 to less than $10 at the same time. He also lost investments on an array of smaller coins, Jacob said.
Jacob, a tech whizz, believes he has traced his investments to two wallets – one two different exchanges called MEXC and BTSE. Using details of the accounts provide by Jacob, MyLondon saw around 19,000 XRP left Jacob’s account at around 1:50am on May 9, then moved through various wallets. This made it extremely difficult to track, but we successfully followed some of the coins to one of the wallets, while Jacob says he has traced some of his money to another $10,000,000 wallet.
Though he has an idea of where the crypto has gone, without insurance, there is no way of getting it back without the help of the FBI. The Bureau’s Virtual Assets Unit (VAU) was set up in 2022, tasked with providing crypto expertise, blockchain analysis, and virtual asset seizure training, but Jacob isn’t particularly optimistic about the chances of a seizure.
“It’s virtually impossible to get that money back unless some weird miracle happened – taking down that ring and getting these wallets back,” explained Jacob, who was made redundant from his developing job around a month ago. “I was investing in crypto before anyone. I was really into it in high school before Bitcoin was $1,000.”
Reflecting on everything that has happened, he said: “It sucks man. I’m alive, and that’s honestly – I was not so stoked at first – but that’s definitely the more important thing. Money will come and go. It’s just really strange. I’m just worried guys will keep getting away with it. He probably made enough money that he will not have to do this again for a while.”
‘Totally unacceptable’
After reporting the alleged robbery to the Metropolitan Police, Action Fraud, the FBI’s special IC3 cybercrime unit, and Uber, Jacob is staying at an Airbnb in Clapham with his family to make himself available for a police interview. After MyLondon approached the Met with details of the allegations, Jacob was told the assigned officer would be on leave until May 21, two weeks after he called 999.
A Met Police spokesperson said: “Police were called at 4:48am on Friday, May 9 with reports of a theft in Westminster that morning. A 30-year-old man reported his phone had been stolen at Prince’s Square, following a ride in a taxi. He also alleges that around $150,000 worth of Cryptocurrency was stolen from his bank accounts afterwards. No arrests have as yet been made. Enquiries are ongoing.”
Jacob’s original estimate was $150,000 when he reported it to police, though he later revised the estimate down to $123,000.
Claire Webb, Acting Director of Action Fraud, said: “Action Fraud can confirm that it received NFRC250507346333 on 13 May and it is currently being assessed by the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau (NFIB) at the City of London Police.”
An Uber spokesperson said: “Everybody should feel safe when riding with Uber as the safety of everyone using the app is always the number one priority. The experience the passenger describes is totally unacceptable and we are fully investigating the reported incident.”
The Roxy was also approached for comment.
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