A 26-year-old Jacksonville, Florida man has pleaded guilty to kidnapping a Portland resident in a scheme that left the victim duct-taped to a post in a rural field, badly beaten, and stripped of roughly $128,000 in cryptocurrency. Billy Shane Cordova entered his plea to one count of kidnapping before U.S. Magistrate Judge Youlee Yim You.
According to OregonLive.com, a related conspiracy to commit kidnapping charge against Cordova will be dismissed as part of the plea deal, and he is scheduled to be sentenced on January 13, 2027.
That negotiated range sits well below the maximum exposure Cordova faced. Under 18 U.S.C. § 1201, the federal kidnapping statute, crossing state lines to commit an abduction can carry a sentence of life imprisonment, according to Eisner Gorin LLP.
Surveillance, a Rented Car, and a Field in Banks
Per the station's account, four Florida men flew to Portland in 2023 and rented cars through the Turo car-sharing app before conducting surveillance on the victim's apartment, waiting for the right opportunity to strike. On November 10, 2023, the alleged abductors forced the Portland man from one vehicle into another while other members of the group entered his apartment to try to access his cryptocurrency, the report states.
Cordova and the other alleged abductors then drove the victim to a rural field in Banks, where they tied him to a post with duct tape and assaulted him repeatedly and brutally, per the same account. The man suffered serious injuries, including several broken bones and a collapsed lung. Investigators say the group used his seed phrase — the master recovery key that grants total access to a digital wallet — to transfer out about $128,000 in cryptocurrency, a method Proofpoint describes as an irreversible security threat once coerced from a victim.
A passerby discovered the victim duct-taped to a post near Northwest Mountaindale Road and Old Pumpkin Ridge Road in Banks on the morning of November 11, 2023, and called police at 8:33 a.m., reporting that the man appeared to have been subjected to torture, the outlet reported. Cordova told the court simply, “I plead guilty,” according to the same report.
Four Defendants, Two Pleas, Two Holdouts
All four defendants were arrested in Florida in late September 2023 and later transferred to Portland to face federal charges. Cordova also faces unrelated pending charges in Florida, including displaying a firearm during a felony, possession of a controlled substance, and possession of drug paraphernalia, the station noted.
Jackson Suha Reves, 21, pleaded guilty to a single kidnapping count on October 2. Cordova and Reves are both being held at the federal prison in Sheridan. The other two defendants, 26-year-old Ralph Moreno Jr. and 22-year-old Justice Uallah Del Carpio, have pleaded not guilty to kidnapping and conspiracy to commit kidnapping, and whether they will proceed to trial or reach plea agreements of their own remains to be seen.
Part of a Broader Pattern of Crypto-Targeted Violence
The Portland case fits a pattern federal authorities have flagged with growing urgency. In July 2025, the FBI issued a public warning about so-called “In Real Life (IRL) Com” criminal networks whose members orchestrate home invasions, kidnappings, and violent assaults to steal digital assets from cryptocurrency holders. The bureau's Internet Crime Complaint Center also reported that Americans lost more than $11 billion across 181,565 complaints tied to cryptocurrency fraud and extortion in its 2025 annual report, making digital currency the single highest-loss fraud category in the country.
Cyber-law enforcement has come to call this style of crime a “wrench attack,” reflecting how criminal groups have escalated from digital hacking to targeted physical abductions aimed at extracting seed phrases. The approach has shown up in several recent federal cases: in September 2024, Florida resident Remy Ra St. Felix was sentenced to 47 years in prison, the longest U.S. sentence for a crypto-focused physical extortion spree, after leading a multi-state ring that tortured 11 victims across four states, according to TRM Labs.
Hoodline has covered a similar case involving two Texas brothers who pleaded guilty in June 2026 to one count each of Interference with Commerce by Robbery, stemming from an $8 million cryptocurrency ransom scheme in Minnesota.
