A Los Angeles County Superior Court jury on Monday convicted former LAPD reserve officer Eric Halem of kidnapping and robbery for his role in a December 2024 Koreatown home invasion that prosecutors say netted about $350,000 in cryptocurrency from a 17-year-old. Witnesses said the men posed as police, forced the teen to hand over a hard drive loaded with Bitcoin, and restrained another occupant with LAPD-issued handcuffs. Halem is scheduled to be sentenced at the end of March.
How prosecutors say the raid unfolded
According to prosecutors, Halem and three other men rolled up to the Koreatown high-rise in a green Range Rover, and an orange Lamborghini Urus rented from a business tied to Halem. Wearing vests that identified them as officers, they allegedly used an access code to get to the 18th floor, then forced their way into the teen’s unit.
The teen and his girlfriend testified that the intruders handcuffed them, threatened to kill the teen, and demanded the code to a safe. The teen eventually gave up a thumb-drive wallet holding roughly $350,000 in Bitcoin. Prosecutors have described one co-defendant as having ties to the “Israeli mafia,” and jurors returned their verdict in less than a day of deliberations, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Charges and the legal stakes
The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office charged Halem in August 2025 with kidnapping for ransom, first-degree residential robbery, and home-invasion robbery in concert. Prosecutors say each defendant could face life in state prison if convicted as charged.
According to the DA, the incident began around 2:30 a.m. on Dec. 28, 2024, when the men allegedly entered the Koreatown apartment, handcuffed two people, and transferred funds from a cryptocurrency account. The case is being handled by the Organized Crime Division, per a news release from the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office.
From patrol to private business
Halem spent about 13 years with the LAPD before shifting into the department’s reserve program by 2022, while running side ventures that included an exotic-car rental service called DriveLA, investigators say. Earlier this year, he was already under scrutiny in a separate insurance-fraud case, and detectives served search warrants at his home after his arrest, seizing firearms, according to prior coverage from NBC Los Angeles.
Defense reaction and what’s next
In court, Halem’s attorney argued that detectives had “cherry-picked” a handful of messages from terabytes of data and that the teen’s account was not fully corroborated. Prosecutors countered with text messages shown to jurors in which Halem appeared to monitor police radio traffic.
Halem did not take the stand. His lawyer questioned the idea that this was a tightly organized crew, pointing out that cars equipped with GPS trackers were used in the alleged crime. The guilty verdict sends Halem to a sentencing hearing on March 31, and several alleged accomplices have yet to stand trial, according to the Los Angeles Times.
