French Police Rescue Kidnapped Father of Crypto Millionaire: Reports

French authorities have rescued the father of a crypto millionaire through a coordinated raid Saturday night, days after being held hostage.

The victim, whose identity remains undisclosed, was abducted in broad daylight Thursday morning in Paris’s 14th arrondissement when four masked men forced him into a nondescript delivery van, according to initial reporting from Le Monde with Agence France-Presse.

Reports from the Paris prosecutor’s office indicate police located the victim Saturday night at a rental property in the Essonne region south of Paris.

The five suspects, all in their twenties, were arrested during the operation led by specialized cybercrime and intervention units.

Separate reporting from Le Parisien claimed the kidnappers had demanded between €5 (US$5.6 million) and €7 million (US$7.95 million) in crypto after severing one of the victim’s fingers.

“The victim appears to be the father of a man who made his fortune in cryptocurrencies,” a prosecutor’s office spokesperson stated.

Investigators later learned from the victim’s wife that her husband and their son operated a crypto marketing firm registered in Malta.

No ransom was paid before the rescue, French authorities confirmed.

Wrench attacks continue

The incident represents the latest in what security experts call “wrench attacks”—physical threats used to override crypto’s digital security measures. 

The term originates from a 2012 XKCD comic, according to the first comprehensive study on wrench attacks done by researchers at the University of Cambridge and the University College of London, as previously reported by Decrypt.

These kinds of attacks “undermine the efficacy of existing digital security norms when confronted with real-world threats,” the researchers said.

In January, Ledger co-founder David Balland was kidnapped and mutilated before police rescued him in what Ledger Chairman and CEO Pascal Gauthier described as a “traumatic situation that we hope will never be repeated.”

Jameson Lopp, co-founder and chief technology officer of Bitcoin security firm Casa, documents physical Bitcoin attacks in a GitHub repository. The list shows the Paris incident as the 21st attack this year.

Wrench attacks are “roughly correlated with the size of the market and overall adoption of crypto,” Lopp told Decrypt in February.

Security experts such as Rigel Walshe, developer at Swan Bitcoin and former police constable in the New Zealand Police Force, urge crypto holders to practice “relaxed awareness” and stay “alert and prepared,” among other easy security measures that could be done to prevent wrench attacks.

Edited by Sebastian Sinclair