According to French authorities, roughly 40 cryptocurrency-related kidnappings and hostage-takings since the start of the year.
Criminal syndicates are increasingly targeting digital asset investors, institutional executives, and their families in calculated plots to extort irreversible crypto ransoms.
Escalating crypto extortion
Cryptocurrency-related abductions were considered to be "marginal" and barely known before 2024. However, the threat landscape shifted drastically over the past two years.
According to Annabelle Vandendriessche, head of the French interior ministry's Service for Information, Intelligence, and Strategic Analysis on Organised Crime (Sirasco), the trend gained significant momentum in 2025.
The violent nature of such crimes grabbed international headlines in January 2025. Back then, kidnappers targeted David Balland, a French crypto boss and co-founder of the hardware wallet firm Ledge. They severed Balland's finger to extort a hefty crypto ransom. Balland was freed the following day, and his girlfriend was later discovered tied up in the trunk of a car.
The frequency of these specialized kidnappings has accelerated since then.
The perpetrators are becoming highly organized, with the modus operandi varying significantly from case to case. However, a common thread involves decentralized crime rings. The masterminds orchestrating these abductions are often based entirely abroad and use "on-the-ground" henchmen for doing their dirty work.
Recently, a crew of five individuals carried out a kidnapping in the southern French town of Anglet. They were actively hunting for a specific crypto investor but apparently "mistook their target." Police later intercepted and arrested the suspects at the Montparnasse train station in Paris.
U.Today Editorial Team
Dan Burgin
