There have been a series of kidnappings in Western Europe targeting cryptocurrency magnates with huge ransom demands and sometimes horrible results.
At least four kidnappings of wealthy cryptocurrency entrepreneurs and their families have taken place in the past six months through France, Spain and Belgium, with attempts to extort these people for tens of millions of dollars.
A 60-year-old man who has a cryptocurrency marketing company with his son was kidnapped in a street in Paris earlier this month by masked attackers who forced him in a van, As indicated by The guardian.
The man was selected captive for several days, the kidnappers cutting his finger and demanding a ransom between 9 and 12 million dollars of his son, according to the French daily The Parisian.
The man was found by the police a few days later and rescued, the ransom is not paid.
“The victim seems to be the father of a man who made a fortune in cryptocurrencies, the crime involving a ransom application,” said the prosecutor of the French state.
Targeted crypto kingpins
This is another in a series of similar attacks against the figures of cryptocurrencies generally with important online suites, in Europe in recent months.
In January, the co-founder of the Ledger cryptocurrency company, David Balland, was kidnapped with his partner of a house in the center of France.
Balland’s finger was also cut by the attackers and was sent to his trading partner with a video requiring a ransom of around $ 17.5 million.
The influencer of cryptocurrency was quickly rescued by the police, with nine suspects now under investigation concerning crime.
Ledger provides hardware portfolios for the secure storage of cryptocurrencies and is worth nearly $ 2 billion.
At the end of last year, the 56-year-old father of an influencer of French cryptocurrency was kidnapped in eastern France, the son soon receiving a ransom request. The man was discovered alive a day later in the trunk of a car in Normandy.
In December of last year, four men Kidnapped the woman of a millionaire of cryptocurrency in BelgiumAnd fled to the coast in a car.
They were quickly arrested and the woman saved herself.
And in February of this year, a cryptocurrency broker was extorted for more than $ 50,000 after a Lower meeting in Spain.
The broker was invited to an apartment, then said to give more than $ 50,000 to cryptocurrency of his client’s accounts or to be tortured and even killed.
After pretending to call a client, the man rather called a friend in London and, speaking in Hindi, told him that he was kidnapped.
After the authorities were alerted, the man was found by Spanish police.
Three British men were arrested for the incident.
Cryptographic crimes
It comes after one of the biggest cryptocurrency hacks in history earlier this year, with around 2.4 billion dollars in digital assets from the cryptocurrency stock market by alleged North Korean criminals.
He was described as a “larger, cryptocurrency breakage never recorded”, the attackers who would have manipulated a routine transaction between two cryptocurrency wallets to take control of billions of dollars in Ethereum.
Last year the Australian promoter of a Ponzi cryptocurrency regime was placed on a three-year-old good conduct after pleading guilty to an accusation of having provided financial services without license.
And at the end of last year, the Australian federal police seized more than $ 9 million in cryptocurrency linked to the brain accused of a communication application that allegedly used by organized crime figures.
The application, Ghost, was “built only for the criminal world”, alleged the police and was used worldwide.
The cryptocurrency was found after a specialist analyzed the devices of the human home and deciphered the so-called “seed phrase” necessary to access its cryptographic wallet.
