French police rescued the father of a cryptocurrency entrepreneur from his kidnappers Saturday night, but found he\u2019d had one of his fingers severed \u2013 the latest in a spate of abductions tied to cryptocurrency. <\/p>\n
The victim, who has not been publicly identified, was forced into a van by four men wearing ski masks on a street of Paris Thursday morning. He was held hostage in an Airbnb 12 miles south of the French capital for two days before being rescued. <\/p>\n
Five people between the ages of 23 and 27 were brought into police custody following the raid, according to the Paris Prosecutor\u2019s office. <\/p>\n
The kidnapping shares striking similarities with other recent kidnappings tied to crypto currency in France and surrounding countries. <\/p>\n
In January 2025, David Balland, cofounder of the crypto wallet company Ledger, was kidnapped with his wife from their home in central France. <\/p>\n
Before the couple was freed by police, the assailants cut off Balland\u2019s finger, sending a video of the severed appendage to his business partner Eric Larchev\u00eaque and demanding ransom money. <\/p>\n
In December 2024, the wife of crypto investor and influencer St\u00e9phane Winkel was kidnapped from the couple\u2019s home in Belgium. She was rescued after her kidnapper crashed his car in a dramatic police chase, Winkel wrote in a post on X. <\/p>\n
It is unclear whether the recent spate of crypto kidnappings are connected or not. <\/p>\n
\u201cObviously there\u2019s at least a link in the modus operandi. Now, whether it\u2019s the same team or not is for the investigators to say.\u201d said internal security expert Guillaume Farde speaking on French television Sunday. <\/p>\n\n
French police rescued the father of a cryptocurrency entrepreneur from his kidnappers Saturday night, but found he\u2019d had one of his fingers severed \u2013 the latest in a spate of abductions tied to cryptocurrency. The victim, who has not been publicly identified, was forced into a van by four men wearing ski masks on a <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":34689,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-34688","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/americanfinancecore.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34688","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/americanfinancecore.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/americanfinancecore.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/americanfinancecore.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34688"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/americanfinancecore.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34688\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/americanfinancecore.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/americanfinancecore.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/americanfinancecore.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/americanfinancecore.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}