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As Kent Haliburton He stood in the bathroom of the Rosewood Hotel in central Amsterdam, thousands of miles from his home, running his fingers through an envelope filled with 10,000 euros in transparent banknotes, and began to wonder what he had gotten himself into.
Halliburton is the co-founder and CEO of Sazmining, a company that operates… Bitcoin mining hardware On behalf of customers – a model known as “Mining as a Service”. Halliburton is based in Peru, but Sazmining operates mining rigs from third-party data centers across Norway, Paraguay, Ethiopia and the United States.
As Halliburton says, he had flown to Amsterdam the day before, August 5, to meet Yvin and Maxime, representatives of a wealthy family living in Monaco. The family office has offered to buy hundreds of Bitcoin mining rigs from Sazmining — worth about $4 million — which the company will install at a facility currently under construction in Ethiopia. Before completing the deal, the family office requested a personal interview with Halliburton.
When Halliburton arrived at the Rosewood Hotel, he found Evin and Maxim sitting in a booth. They struck him as a playboy, a likable type—particularly Maxim, who wore a tan three-piece suit and had a very manicured appearance, his long dark hair parted down the middle. A Rolex watch protruded from the side of his sleeve.
Over a three-course lunch — ceviche with roe garnish, Chilean seabass, and cherry cake — they discussed the contours of the deal and exchanged details about each other’s backgrounds. He was even talkative and joking, telling stories about explosive parties in Marrakesh. Maxim was aloof. He mostly stared at Haliburton, holding his gaze for long periods at a time as if sizing him up.
In order to build relationships, Even suggested that Halliburton sell the family office for about $3,000 in bitcoin. Halliburton was hesitant at first, but saw it as a strange dating ritual. One of the men provided Halliburton with the envelope full of cash and asked it to go to the bathroom, where he could calculate the amount in private. “It looked like something out of a James Bond movie,” Halliburton says. “It was all very strange to me.”
She left Halliburton in a taxi, somewhat disconcerted by the encounter, but hopeful of completing the deal with the family office. For Sazmining, a small company with about 15 employees, it promised to be transformative.
Less than two weeks later, Halliburton lost more than $200,000 in bitcoin to Even and Maxim. He did not know whether Sazmining would be able to survive the blow, nor how the crooks had trapped him.