Man brutally burned alive after being ‘tortured and extorted his cryptocurrency’

Saturday, December 6, 2025 - A student found burned alive in his father’s Mercedes in Vienna was likely targeted and extorted for a large amount of cryptocurrency he controlled, according to Austrian investigators.

Danilo Kuzmin, twenty-one, originally from Ukraine, was discovered last Wednesday in the back seat of a burned-out Mercedes beneath a bridge in the Austrian capital. Two suspects, including a nineteen-year-old fellow student, have been arrested in connection with the killing.

Kuzmin, the son of Kharkiv’s deputy mayor, Sergei Kuzmin, had been living in Vienna after fleeing the war in Ukraine. His injuries were so severe, with burns covering around eighty percent of his body, that authorities could not immediately identify him. A match was made only after his family and a friend filed missing persons reports, noting that he had stopped answering his phone.

Post mortem findings revealed he had suffered blunt force trauma, including head injuries and broken teeth, before he was burned. Investigators concluded he was still alive when the fire began and died from suffocation or heat shock. A melted petrol canister recovered from the back seat indicated the blaze was deliberate; the Mercedes runs on diesel.

Police believe Kuzmin was lured to an underground garage at a luxury hotel, beaten, and forced into the car before it was driven to the killing site. Viennese detectives reported finding a “large” outgoing transfer from Kuzmin’s cryptocurrency wallet around the time of the attack, though the exact amount was not disclosed.

CCTV footage reportedly shows the nineteen-year-old suspect purchasing a petrol canister at a station in the city. He and a forty-five-year-old man, both Ukrainian nationals, were identified shortly afterward. Authorities say the two fled Austria and entered Ukraine the morning after the murder. They were arrested later the same day by Ukrainian police.

Austria has agreed to allow Ukraine to prosecute the suspects domestically, while Viennese authorities continue to support the ongoing investigation. There has been no indication yet as to whether either suspect has admitted involvement in Kuzmin’s killing.