A Belgian celebrity barber was lured to London by a “honeytrap” promise of luxury and then kidnapped by a gang demanding £500,000 in cryptocurrency – but the criminals’ plan fell apart spectacularly when they discovered their captive’s crypto wallet held a mere £6.71. The gang’s ransom scheme quickly unraveled, and in a bizarre twist they eventually dumped their victim at a train station empty-handed.

Quentin Cepeljac, 21, a barber famed for cutting the hair of professional footballers, was targeted online by 20-year-old Davina Raaymakers, who posed as an affluent admirer on TikTok and Instagram. After months of flirtatious exchanges, Raaymakers invited him for a weekend getaway in London – but when Cepeljac arrived in May 2024, the promised luxury apartment was suddenly “unavailable,” and he was instead led to a tiny basement bedsit in Shepherd’s Bush, west London.

Instead of a romantic rendezvous, Cepeljac walked into an ambush. Raaymakers’ boyfriend, Adlan Haji, 28, and accomplices Alexander Khalil, 30, and Omar Sharif, 24, were lying in wait. They held a machete to the young barber’s throat, stabbed a knife into his leg, and beat him savagely while demanding he transfer what they believed was a £500,000 crypto fortune. To drive home their threats, the kidnappers even showed him a video of an apparent stabbing as a warning. But when the terrified victim finally opened his crypto accounts, the gang was stunned to find only £6.71 – one incredulous thug reportedly blurted, “Are you kidding me?”.

With their grand heist collapsing, the panicked gang grabbed whatever they could from Cepeljac – roughly £2,300 in cash, plus his designer Louis Vuitton wallet and Cartier glasses – as consolation. They slashed their ransom demand from £500,000 down to £50,000, then to just £2,000 – the only money he had – and even forced him to call a friend in Belgium to beg for more funds. That desperate call backfired: the friend alerted Belgian police, who in turn tipped off Scotland Yard. Sensing the net closing in, the kidnappers abruptly decided to free Cepeljac. They returned his passport and phone, then bundled him into a taxi to St Pancras International station and told him to go home. There, officers from the Metropolitan Police’s Flying Squad intercepted the shaken barber and retraced his steps to the Shepherd’s Bush hideout – which the crooks had hastily scrubbed with bleach – and soon tracked down all four suspects using phone records and CCTV evidence.

At a hearing this week, all four conspirators – Raaymakers, Haji, Khalil, and Sharif – pleaded guilty to blackmail charges at Isleworth Crown Court. In a comical twist illustrating the gang’s bungling, Sharif was actually wearing an electronic ankle monitor from a prior offense and even left the crime scene early during the nine-hour hostage ordeal to meet his 8pm curfew. Cepeljac, meanwhile, has been left traumatized by the terrifying ordeal – he suffers flashbacks, insomnia, and has lost trust in people, especially towards women after the honeytrap betrayal. The hapless gang is now awaiting sentencing and is expected to face lengthy prison terms for their outrageous scheme.

Hair-raising Honeytrap: Celebrity Barber Kidnapped in £500k Crypto Ransom Plot Collapses in Chaos