Video: Brooklyn crypto consultant hog-tied, beaten during home invasion
Disturbing home surveillance footage captures a pair of home invaders hog-tying a Brooklyn man and raiding his home for two pricey designer watches.
The footage obtained by The Post Wednesday shows a ski-mask-wearing suspect kneeling over 37-year-old Ilya Basin and holding his zip-tied hands inside his high-rise apartment at West 5th Street and Neptune Avenue in Brighton Beach around noon on Feb. 3.
The duo stole a Rolex Presidential watch and an Audemars Piguet watch, which Basin says are worth a combined $350,000 today.
The terrifying ordeal lasted about a half-hour, the victim said.
“Don’t scream or we’re going to have to choke you out,” one of the suspects can be heard saying as Basin lay shirtless on the ground and his Northern Inuit dog, Smokey, barked in the background.
“I’m not going to scream,” he replied. “I promise.”
Basin, a crypto consultant and tech buff who lives with his girlfriend – who wasn’t home at the time – said the intruders tricked him by ringing the bell and placing someone else’s package in front of his door.
The unsuspecting victim saw the package on his Nest camera and opened the door to pick it up.
“As I opened it, they both bum-rushed me,” Basin said. “Maybe if I had some karate training, I would have acted differently, but my first instinct was to try to swing the door close[d].”
The ski-mask-wearing suspect then “took me down,” Basin said.
“I hit my head on the dog’s food bowl,” he added. “Once I was on the ground, they zip-tied my hands behind me. They put tape over my mouth and taped my ankles together.
“For the first minute or two, I was just hoping that I was going to wake up,” he recalled. “I didn’t think it was real. It happened so quick that I didn’t know what was going on. It [makes] no sense.”
One of the suspects is shown on the video wandering around the apartment and repeatedly asking, “Where’s the money?”
At one point, the same intruder kicked him in the face and told him to “shut up” as he whimpered on the ground.
In a separate video released by cops, the invader is shown rifling through the refrigerator. Basin said he took out French fries and blueberries, apparently to keep Smokey quiet.
The robber ultimately found the watches in their original boxes in Basin’s bedroom closet and stuffed them in a backpack.
The duo disconnected Basin’s Internet router and untied him before they bolted, according to the victim.
Basin said the incident was “the most traumatizing thing that’s ever happened to me.”
“I’ve been living in this city since I was six years old,” Basin said. “This is my home, but this makes me feel like I should definitely get out of here. I don’t have enemies. I’m a sweetheart of a dude. It’s very shocking that this happened.”
He added that all his wealth was in those two watches.
“That’s all my money,” he said. “It’s literally all I have. It was my one hope of getting a house, getting out of here. It was my ‘one ticket’ situation to get a better life.”
Cops continued to search for the suspects Wednesday.
