...To the criminals, he was likely seen no differently than anyone else who had a stash of valuables in his house. The only thing that made this story remarkable was the fact that it involved crypto instead of cash, gold, jewelry, corporate secrets or any other easily carried stores of wealth.
In many ways bitcoins are more attractive to the robbers than physical valuables. It's easier to convert to fiat than art/jewellery/electronic equipment/cars etc, easier to launder, and most of all - you're not in possession of stolen goods (unless you're stupid and force victim to send btc to the wallet installed on your phone etc).
Probably cash would be still the preferred target, as you don't need to convert it, but having huge stash of cash is always suspicious and can be a crucial proof against you.
If that robber transfer this BTC into fiat, he surely will be captured.
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I don't expect them to register on Coinbase and just transfer btc from the address the victim was forced to send to. If they now what they're doing, they'll put coins through the mixer and cash out slowly in a non suspicious manner.
We've seen many spectacular bitcoin hacks over the years, in most cases hackers don't get caught.