Terrifying home surveillance footage captures the moment a pair of hooded home invaders hog-tied a Brooklyn man and raided his home for two pricey designer watches on Feb. 3.
The footage from the New York Police Department (NYPD) was taken Thursday last week at around noon at the 37-year-old victim’s high-rise apartment near West 5 Street and Neptune Avenue in Brighton Beach. The men who attacked Ilya Basin were wearing balaclavas to hide their faces, the New York Post reported.
In the video, the duo scrambled to steal a Rolex Presidential watch and an Audemars Piguet watch, worth a combined $350,000 today, as a restrained and shirtless Basin, who was lying on the ground, watches everything unfold. The ordeal lasted about a half-hour, the victim said.
“Don’t scream or we’re going to have to choke you out,” one of the suspects can be heard saying as Basin’s Northern Inuit dog, Smokey, barking in the background.
“I’m not going to scream,” he replied. “I promise.”
Basin, a crypto consultant and tech buff who lives with his girlfriend, said the intruders tricked him by ringing the bell and placing someone else’s package in front of his door. Unsuspecting, he opened the door to pick up the package upon seeing it on his Nest camera. His partner was not home at the time of the robbery.
The victim said the men quickly “bum-rushed” him inside the unit after he opened the door, adding one of the suspects took him down, during which he hit his head on the dog’s food bowl.
“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 recalled. “For the first minute or two, I was hoping that I was going to wake up. It happened so quickly that I didn’t know what was going on. It [makes] no sense.”
At one point, the intruders would menace him with a knife, repeatedly asking, “Where’s the money?” as they rummage through his belongings, according to the Daily Mail. Ultimately, the men would kick Basin in the face before telling him to “shut up” as he whimpered on the ground.
In a separate video, the invaders are shown rifling through the refrigerator, taking out French fries and blueberries to keep the dog quiet.
Minutes later, the duo located the watches in their original boxes in Basin’s bedroom closet, quickly stuffing them in a backpack. The robbers then disconnected Basin’s Internet router and untied him before fleeing.
Basin called the incident “the most traumatizing thing that’s ever happened to me,” noting his wealth was in those two watches as he was keeping it as his “one-way ticket” to get a better life.
As of Wednesday, arrests are yet to be made as the NYPD works with the public to identify and ultimately locate and arrest the suspects.
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