as Kent Halliburton Thousands of miles away from home, standing in the bathroom of the Rosewood Hotel in central Amsterdam, running his fingers through an envelope filled with €10,000 in notes, he 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 SageMining runs mining hardware from third-party data centers in Norway, Paraguay, Ethiopia, and the United States.
As Halliburton tells it, he had gone to Amsterdam the previous day, August 5, to meet Ivan and Maxim, two representatives of a wealthy family based in Monaco. The family office had offered to purchase hundreds of bitcoin mining rigs from Sazmining – worth approximately $4 million – which the company would install at a facility currently under construction in Ethiopia. Before finalizing the deal, the family office had asked to meet with Halliburton in person.
When Halliburton arrived at the Rosewood Hotel, he found Ivan and Maxim sitting in a booth. They considered him a playboy, high-roller type – especially Maxim, who wore tan three-piece suits and a highly manicured look, with his long black hair parted down the middle. There was a Rolex sticking out of the cuff of his sleeve.
Over a three-course lunch – ceviche with roe garnish, Chilean sea bass and cherry cake – they discussed the outlines of the deal and gave details about their respective backgrounds. He was even talkative and funny, telling stories about boisterous parties in Marrakesh. Maxim was different; He mostly stared at Halliburton, holding his gaze for long periods at a time as if examining him for size.
As a relationship-building exercise, Halliburton even proposed selling the family office in Bitcoin for about $3,000. Halliburton was initially hesitant, but chalked it up to a peculiar dating ritual. One of the men gave Halliburton an envelope filled with cash and asked him to go to the bathroom, where he could count the amount in private. “It felt like something out of a James Bond movie,” Halliburton says. “It was all very strange to me.”
Halliburton left in a taxi, somewhat dazed by the encounter, but otherwise hopeful of completing the deal with the family office. For SageMining, a small company of about 15 employees, it promised to be game-changing.
Less than two weeks later, Halliburton lost more than $200,000 worth of Bitcoin to Even and Maxim. He did not know whether Szmining would survive the blow, nor how the scammers had ensnared him.