Kidnappings, torture, and severed fingers: Attacks on crypto entrepreneurs shake France 

At 8:20 a.m. on May 13, just as parents were accompanying their children to school in the wealthy 11th arrondissement of Paris, three hooded, armed men got out of a white delivery van and tried to kidnap a woman walking down the street with her two-year-old son. The father threw himself to the ground between them and received several blows to the head before a neighbor armed with a fire extinguisher appeared on the scene. Blindsided, the kidnappers took off in their van, abandoning one of the weapons on the sidewalk.

The woman is the daughter of Pierre Noizat, owner of the Paymium platform and a cryptocurrency pioneer. This is a sector being targeted by organized crime in France and this case is not atypical. The country has been experiencing a wave of kidnappings with extreme violence against cryptocurrency investors and their families for months. The advantages of this type of currency in the market is its speed and anonymity while the fact it is untraceable makes it attractive to organized crime operators, who see it as the perfect currency for ransoms and extortion. France has declared a full-scale war against organized crime, which in recent years has defied the state and even attacked prisons, protesting the reforms planned by the Ministry of the Interior to deal with mafias that operate from inside.

On May 3, the father of a man who made his fortune in cryptocurrency was freed from the trunk of a car in Normandy, having been tortured and doused with gasoline two days earlier. The abduction also took place in broad daylight, at 10.30 a.m. on a street in the 14th arrondissement of Paris. Four individuals wearing masks forced him into a van. The victim was taken to a house in Essonne, about 20 kilometers from the capital. The kidnappers cut off one of his fingers to pressure the family into paying the $4 million ransom. This violent modus operandi is reminiscent of the kidnapping of David Balland, co-founder of the start-up Ledger, which occurred just three and a half months ago.

Balland and his partner were abducted on the morning of January 21 from their home in Méreau, Cher. The alarm was raised by Éric Larchevêque, co-founder of Ledger, who had received a video with a severed finger, accompanied by a significant ransom demand in cryptocurrency: €10 million. Kidnapped in Châteauroux, Balland was released on January 22. His partner was found tied up in the trunk of a vehicle in Essonne the next day. Six men and one woman, aged between 20 and 40, were charged shortly after by the national jurisdiction against organized crime.

“In our environment, the threat is no longer virtual,” says influencer specializing in cryptocurrency Owen Simonin, alias Hasheur, on X. “Two years ago, I myself was attacked at my home by an armed stranger, who had found my address and who wanted to take some cryptos from me.”

French kidnappers copy methods they have observed abroad, especially in Latin America. Last January, a Quebec moderator of a cryptocurrency forum and father of four was the target of an attempted kidnapping by assailants who wanted to torture him to steal his bitcoins. In Ukraine, a 29-year-old man was killed by four people last summer, who stole more than €230,000 worth of bitcoins from him, according to the current value of the best-known cryptocurrency. In the summer of 2023, the body of influencer and crypto millionaire Fernando Pérez Algaba was found dismembered in a suitcase on the outskirts of the Argentine capital, Buenos Aires.

The French government does not want the country to become a dangerous place for this type of investor and company, given crypto’s growing relevance within the financial system. Consequently, the Minister of the Interior, the conservative Bruno Retailleau, announced he would be calling representatives in the sector to propose measures to increase their security. “It’s going to be about taking action together to protect them. But we will find the criminal masterminds, wherever they are — perhaps even abroad,” he said.

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