Real money(fiat) is definately easier to steal of the two but one problem that comes with fiat is it will always leave a money trail and the owners of money could easily request for their money through their bank who would chargeback this transfer as its unauthrorized, and as for crypto coins maybe back then it was easier as cold storage, muti sig,2fa and all other secondary security measures werent common but now with this security its easy to avoid losing money in this kind of a manner.