New York City Police are searching for two suspects who they say broke into a man’s Brooklyn home, tied him up, and stole what he says was $350,000 in watches.
Police say the robbery occurred around 12:00 p.m. on February 3 at the victim’s Coney Island apartment near West 5th Street and Neptune Avenue, according to Pix 11.
Chilling video of the attack, obtained by the New York Post, shows the victim Ilya Basin, 37, face down as one suspect holds Basin’s zip-tied hands behind his back.
Warning: Disturbing video below. Viewer discretion is strongly advised:
“Don’t scream or we’re going to have to choke you out,” one of the suspects says to Basin as a dog barks in the background.
“I’m not going to scream,” Basin, a cryptocurrency consultant, responded. “I promise.”
He told the Post the suspects duped him into opening up his high-rise apartment door by placing someone else’s package in front of the door and ringing the bell. Basin looked through his Nest camera, saw the package, and went to retrieve it.
“As I opened it, they both bum-rushed me,” he recounted. “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 New York City Police Department released footage from the front door in hopes of the public’s help in identifying the suspects.
Watch Below:
Basin says the men quickly got him to the ground.
“I hit my head on the dog’s food bowl,” he explained. “Once I was on the ground, they zip-tied my hands behind me. They put tape over my mouth and taped my ankles together.
He remembers hoping the ordeal was just a nightmare.
“For the first minute or two, I was just hoping that I was going to wake up,” Basin told the Post. “I didn’t think it was real. It happened so quick that I didn’t know what was going on. It [makes] no sense.”
As one of the suspects paces around the apartment, he repeatedly asks “where is the money?”
“Why do you think we’re here you idiot? We know what you have,” the suspect says. He reportedly kicked Basin in the face and told him to “shut up” at one point during the break-in, the New York Post reported.
Eventually, the pair found his watches – a Rolex Presidential and an Audemars Piguet – in a bedroom closet. Basin says they are worth a combined $350,000. They then disconnected his internet router and took off, he told the Post.
The ordeal lasted about 30 minutes, he said. One of the suspects allegedly threatened him with a knife, according to WCBS.
“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 noted that most of his wealth was tied up in the 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.”
The suspects remained at large on Wednesday. Anyone with information regarding the incident is encouraged to contact New York Police Department’s Crime Stoppers at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477).
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