HARTFORD, Conn. — A St. Louis man was sentenced Wednesday to four years in federal prison for helping plan an attempted Bitcoin robbery that ended in the kidnapping of a couple in Danbury in August 2024, federal prosecutors said.

Saif Faiq, 23, was sentenced in U.S. District Court in Hartford by Judge Sarala V. Nagala to 48 months in prison followed by two years of supervised release, the U.S. attorney's office for the District of Connecticut said. Faiq pleaded guilty June 8 to conspiracy to commit robbery affecting commerce, a federal charge known as Hobbs Act robbery.

According to prosecutors, Danbury police arrested six Florida men on Aug. 25, 2024, after a violent carjacking of a Lamborghini Urus in which the two people inside the SUV were kidnapped. Investigators found that the victims are the parents of a person who took part in the theft of hundreds of millions of dollars in Bitcoin, and that the kidnapping grew out of a plan to steal some of that cryptocurrency, prosecutors said.

Prosecutors said Faiq recruited people for the crime, traveled to Connecticut for the planned home invasion and kidnapping, helped watch the victims and coordinated with his brother, Adam Iza. Iza communicated with some of the kidnappers by cellphone and encrypted messaging apps, directed the logistics of the scheme and helped pay for it, according to prosecutors. Iza pleaded guilty to the same charge and was sentenced Sept. 9 to 15 years in prison.

Prosecutors also described an alleged co-conspirator, whom the office did not name, who they said had a fight with the victims' son at a Miami nightclub in July 2024, stayed in regular contact with some of the kidnappers in the days before the crime, helped fund it and arranged travel and lodging for the participants.

Faiq has been held since his arrest Nov. 12, 2025.

This brief was drafted by AI from a public agency or political press release and published by The New England Signal. Why we use AI for stories like this one.