France has seen more than forty cases of kidnappings or hostage takings linked to cryptocurrencies since January, a worrying surge since last year as criminals seek to extort digital currency investors for ransom, authorities said Thursday.
Since late 2024 French authorities have been dealing with a string of kidnappings and extortion attempts targeting the families of wealthy individuals dealing in cryptocurrencies.
Some of the cases targeted institutional digital currency players or individuals with crypto holdings, while others involved other crimes not involving kidnappings, Philippe Chadrys, deputy national director of the judicial police, told journalists Thursday.
"The modus operandi, the masterminds -- often based abroad -- and the targeting methods" vary, Chadrys said, with the names of targets sometimes revealed to henchmen at the last moment.
The phenomenon of crypto-related abductions, still "marginal” in 2024, gained momentum in 2025 when around thirty cases were reported, said Annabelle Vandendriessche, head of the interior ministry's Service for Information, Intelligence, and Strategic Analysis on Organised Crime (Sirasco).
On Mondaym a woman and her 11-year-old son were kidnapped in the central Burgundy region ahead of a crypto ransom demand.
After an operation involving around 100 officers, they were freed by Tuesday and seven men were taken into custody.
Also this month, a kidnapping took place in the southern French town of Anglet on April 10, carried out by five individuals searching for a crypto investor. They allegedly stole luxury jewelry, computers and phones.
Police arrested the suspects at Paris's Montparnasse train station after they apparently "mistook their target," Chadrys said.
In a particulalry grisly case from January 2025, kidnappers seized French crypto boss David Balland, co-founder of a crypto firm called Ledger, valued at the time at more than $1 billion.
Balland's kidnappers cut off his finger and demanded a hefty ransom before he was freed the next day, with his girlfriend found tied up in the boot of a car outside Paris.
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