French gendarmes have been busy policing crypto crimes, but these aren’t the usual financial schemes, cons, and HODL! shenanigans one usually reads about. No, these crimes involve abductions, (multiple) severed fingers, and (multiple) people rescued from the trunks of cars—once after being doused with gasoline.
This previous weekend was particularly nuts, with an older gentleman snatched from the streets of Paris’ 14th arrondissement on May 1 by men in ski masks. The 14th is a pleasant place—I highly recommend a visit to the catacombs in Place Denfert-Rochereau—and not usually the site of snatch-and-grab operations. The abducted man was apparently the father of someone who had made a packet
13 Comments
eru
Stealing most crypto money is about the dumbest thing ever, because all transactions (for most such currencies) are open to the public to scrutinise and de-anonymous at their leisure. And the police is included in 'the public'.
walterbell
"French police free kidnapped Ledger executive" (Feb 2025), https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42819018
Physical security primer for Bitcoin (2019), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUgPhPkS2yc
dandanua
Reached? It's been happening for over a decade. Gosh, even the Bitcoin creator was probably murdered by "opportunists seeking to solve world hunger".
flmontpetit
Baffles me how this industry is basically speedrunning through the troubled history of regular finance, and every piece of legislation and every institution has to be rebuilt from scratch even though the mechanisms and the problems are almost exactly the same.
Duwensatzaj
Could be worse. In Russia someone discovered a fake prison and incinerator in a police officer’s home.
danaos
I went from early bitcoin adopter to early bitcoin skeptic and despite missing most of the gains I have no regrets.
During the early days the crypto space was concentrated to small online communities. People were mostly interested about the technology and the talk of price was limited, in the context "mass adoption". Nowadays it's about the price and the memes. Add to that the money laundering, energy waste and these abductions. Too many smart people work on these pointless projects instead of useful tech that benefits society.
akimbostrawman
Turns out having a publicly visible bank balance is a bad idea. If only there existed a better coin without that issue…
logicallee
This happened to me, with the difference that nobody was abducted.
Defense contractors associated with the U.S. military said they would sever fingers to make me "care more" here is a screenshot:
https://imgur.com/a/eYP7Xsj
or
https://ibb.co/DD6XTppy
This was sent over a Department of Defense channel.
vkou
The best part in all this is that once the transaction goes through, the kidnappers can definitively verify that they've received the ransom that they were asking for, and that they no longer have any use for loose ends or witnesses.
beloch
Banks are fortified and guarded for a reason. If you have money in bitcoin, it's only as secure as your person and whatever you use to access your crypto assets.
If you had a million in gold, would you leave it on your desk? Walk around with it on the street? Your odds of getting to where you're going with the gold are pretty good in most places, but it's still a big risk. Brag about or show that gold off to somebody, as many in this story did, and you rapidly become a target.
littlestymaar
I'm honestly surprised this hasn't been more prevalent, especially since state actors (NK at least) have used cryptocurrencies to get foreign currency for several years now. No matter how rich and paranoid you are, there are really little you can do to protect yourself from a state actor that wants to get you, especially in an era of ubiquitous digital tracking from tech company that are willing to sell all the Intel they have about you to the highest bidder.
ajb
This was apparently reached in Russia a while back, and became very advanced: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1579124072390463488.html
"In contrast, Russian cryptobros that I know tend to act very, very lowkey. The fewer people know about your activities, the better. Posting about dealing with crypto in social media is absolutely unthinkable. Why? Because that makes you too easy and lucrative prey "
"Most likely explanation:
Russian federal prison officer built an underground prison as an exact copy of a real prison. There he persuaded kidnapped ppl they are in a real prison. They'd give him wants he wanted, then he'd kill & burn them. In 2018 he died, prison was abandoned"
Havoc
Yeah maybe don’t post online about it if you own a ton of crypto