UK groom-to-be tried to rob a store after crypto scam

A British groom-to-be was caught on camera getting tackled while trying to hold up a store — just moments after learning he’d lost the money to pay for his wedding in a crypto scam, a court was told.

Charity worker Louis Crosby, 25, had “naively” converted his life savings into a bogus digital-cash investment, the Sunderland Echo said.

Less than an hour after finding out that he had lost the lot in a con, he grabbed an unloaded air pistol and tried to hold up a local bodega-style store, Newcastle Crown Court heard this week.

“Give me the money, I have a gun,” he reportedly warned.

Video footage showed him wearing all black, with a scarf and sunglasses covering most of his face, as he slowly walked up to the counter last November.

Two male staffers ignored the threat, locking away the cash — and then walked around and tackled him. The footage showed Crosby desperately trying to get back outside the store, just for the workers to keep grabbing hold of him, eventually hauling him back inside for a citizen’s arrest.

During the struggle, the store owner picked up a broken broom handle because he “feared for his life,” prosecutors reportedly told the court hearing.

When cops arrived, Cosby initially claimed it had been “a joke,” the court was told.

However, the first-time offender eventually admitted to attempted robbery and possessing a firearm, the Echo said.

He “wasn’t thinking straight” at the time because he had lost the money he needed to wed a Singapore woman he’d met online, his attorney, Nicholas Lane, told the court.

Ironically, the planned wedding had to be scrapped because of his arrest, the court was told. However, the engagement is still on, the Echo said.

He escaped getting locked up, with his two-year prison sentence suspended for two years, meaning he does not have to serve it behind bars if he remains out of trouble in that time.

Judge Julie Clemitson accepted that he had been in a state of “mental turmoil” when he committed the “impulsive act in response to the loss of all of your savings.”

“You must have been in a state of crisis to have acted in such a desperate manner, with thoughts swinging from taking your own life to committing financial crime to get yourself out of the situation,” Clemitson told him.