French
Crypto Chiefs Step Up Security After String of Violent Kidnappings
Big players
in the crypto sector argue that new European cryptocurrency rules may be
enabling recent abductions and are demanding changes and more security.
Aurelien
BreedenCatherine PorterLiz Alderman
By Aurelien
BreedenCatherine Porter and Liz Alderman
Reporting
from Paris
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/27/world/europe/france-crypto-kidnappings.html
Published
May 27, 2025
Updated May
28, 2025, 2:58 a.m. ET
A man,
beaten and doused in gasoline, was found in the trunk of a car. A couple were
abducted before dawn from their countryside house and sped to separate
locations. A woman was attacked in broad daylight on a Paris street by men
trying to drag her into a van.
Over the
past six months in France, these violent, headline-grabbing kidnappings or
attempted kidnappings, followed by demands for hefty ransoms, had one common
thread: All targeted people with ties to the cryptocurrency world — in most
cases, family members of crypto entrepreneurs or influencers.
While the
growing popularity of cryptocurrencies has enticed criminals around the globe —
including in the United States — the spree of recent attacks in France has
shocked many by their brazenness, brutality and copycat nature. In two
instances, the kidnappers cut off a victim’s finger to scare families and
colleagues into paying millions of euros in ransom, the authorities said — and
in one of those cases, they threatened to drill into the victim’s knee,
according to France’s interior minister.
The
kidnappings were ultimately thwarted by the police or bystanders. The Paris
police said 24 people were taken into custody on Monday and Tuesday in
connection with the attempted kidnapping of a cryptocurrency entrepreneur’s
daughter in Paris, which was captured in a disturbing video.
As alarm
spreads through France’s burgeoning crypto industry, big players are saying
that new European cryptocurrency regulations may be giving hackers access to
sensitive personal data to track their targets. They are pushing the government
to make the rules safer — and stepping up their own personal security.
“Everyone is
thinking about who is next,” said Owen Simonin, a French influencer and
entrepreneur specializing in cryptocurrency who was startled in 2022 when a man
arrived on his doorstep with a gun and demanded money.
Mr. Simonin
was not harmed. But in the aftermath he wiped personal information off the
internet, added secure doors and cameras at his home and hired security guards.
Now, he said, he tries to walk on the side of the street where cars are parked
to make it harder for kidnappers to pull up and grab him.
This month,
after a meeting with crypto executives under tight security, Interior Minister
Bruno Retailleau announced new measures to protect them, including special
access to emergency services, security training with elite police forces and a
safety audit of their homes.
French
officials did not comment for this article on whether cryptocurrency
regulations needed to be adjusted. Among other things, the rules require crypto
entrepreneurs to register their personal address in public databases, as well
as the identities of most people involved in crypto transactions.
Some top
executives have sharply upgraded their physical security, including Éric
Larchevêque, a founder of Ledger, a prominent company that sells physical
devices to store crypto assets. He told RTL radio this month that it cost
50,000 to 100,000 euros (about $57,000 to $113,000) per month for personal
security for executives like him and their families.
Mr.
Retailleau said he was determined to stop the attacks, which he likened to bank
and jeweler heists of past eras. The difference today, he told reporters, is
that old-school ransomers wanted physical cash handed to them, giving the
police opportunities for arrests.
Now, he
said, “it’s completely dematerialized.”
The attacks
have fed into a broader wave of concern in France that violence tied to
organized crime — especially drug trafficking — is spiraling out of control.
The
authorities and experts say the attacks are part of a growing trend in
organized crime, with fewer established, hierarchical groups and more small
teams of violent criminals who do not know one another and who are hired for
specific tasks by distant bosses — a gig economy of crime seen in drug
trafficking, burglaries and, now, ransom-motivated kidnappings.
“We are
seeing more and more young criminals, members of the drug trade, recruited on a
contract basis,” Fabrice Gardon, the head of the Paris judicial police, told
BFMTV this month.
In December,
according to French news reports, a crypto influencer’s family was attacked at
home in Saint-Genis-Pouilly, a village near the Swiss border. The influencer’s
sister and mother were tied up, and his father was forced into a car. The
police later found the father about 370 miles away in the trunk, tied up,
bruised and doused in gasoline, after a patrol at a gas station stumbled upon
two men who then fled.
Then, in
January, David Balland, the co-founder of Ledger, was abducted alongside his
wife from their home in central France. The couple were held for ransom over
two days — Mr. Balland’s finger was cut off — until the police found and freed
them.
This month,
two kidnappings in Paris, France’s capital, shocked the country even further.
First, the
father of a crypto entrepreneur who was walking his dog in southern Paris was
grabbed off the street and thrown into a fake UPS van by a group of hooded men.
The kidnappers, asking for millions of euros, sent footage of a severed finger
to his family.
Then,
witnesses on a busy Paris street watched in shock as three men attacked the
daughter of Pierre Noizat, the chief executive of Paymium, a French
cryptocurrency exchange platform, and tried to force her, screaming, into the
back of a van. Her partner and a bystander repelled the attackers, who fled.
“These
images went around the world,” said Stanislas Bartholemi, the president of
ADAN, a business group that represents France’s crypto industry. “People in the
crypto community are saying, ‘Did you see what happened in France?’”
Experts say
the uptick in kidnappings is partly because of the rising value of currencies
like Bitcoin and because of a broader societal awareness of the crypto
industry. About 12 percent of people in France own cryptocurrencies, according
to a recent study by the audit company KPMG and the Ipsos polling institute.
Mr. Gardon,
the police official, said that criminals were targeting cryptocurrencies
because they considered them easy targets — less protected than a bank vault,
faster to transfer than bags of cash and easier to launder by bouncing the
money from account to account, including abroad.
But some
experts say that this is partly a misperception, and that crypto transfers have
become increasingly secure — sometimes requiring multiple people to sign off on
a single transaction — and in some cases are easier for the authorities to
trace and freeze.
“The bottom
line is that very little money was stolen, apart from residual amounts,” said
Renaud Lifchitz, a cybersecurity consultant and cryptocurrency expert. In Mr.
Balland’s case, part of the ransom was paid, but the authorities were able to
freeze and seize almost all of it.
More
problematic, Mr. Lifchitz said, was that the kidnappers were able to identify
and locate their targets. While it is not yet clear how they did so, he said
that data breaches tied to large hacks of companies or government institutions
were increasingly common.
“There are a
lot of French people whose data is exposed,” he said — including people with
ties to the cryptocurrency world.
One of the
biggest concerns is that Europe-wide cryptocurrency regulations require a level
of transparency that leaves a digital trail that criminals can exploit to stake
out victims, either physically or online, said Mr. Bartholemi, the head of the
French crypto business lobby group.
Some the
data required to be reported are intended to thwart money laundering. But after
the kidnappings, French entrepreneurs asked regulators to consider rewriting
some of the data privacy rules to make them safer.
“If we want
to protect ourselves, we are going to be discreet and anonymous,” said
Alexandre Stachchenko, the director of strategy at Paymium. “But when we want
to be discrete and anonymous, the law tells us it’s criminal. So what do we
do?”
Ségolène Le
Stradic contributed reporting.
Aurelien
Breeden is a reporter for The Times in Paris, covering news from France.
Catherine
Porter is an international reporter for The Times, covering France. She is
based in Paris.
Liz Alderman
is the chief European business correspondent, writing about economic, social
and policy developments around Europe.
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