French police rescue kidnapped father of crypto entrepreneur

In a successful operation, French police freed the father of a crypto entrepreneur, whom kidnappers had taken.

During a police raid in Paris, France, authorities rescued the father of a crypto entrepreneur whom kidnappers had held hostage for several days as part of a ransom plot.

The May 3 operation led to the apprehension of five suspects, according to Le Monde.

The current incident is the third reported abduction involving France’s crypto space since the beginning of the year.

The kidnappers made a ransom demand ranging from 5 to 7 million euros, or up to $7.9 million, from the victim, who is reportedly in his 50s, as Le Parisien, a French daily newspaper, stated.

According to French media, the victims, believed to be a crypto entrepreneur and his father, co-founded a cryptocurrency marketing company based in Malta, though they have kept their identities undisclosed for security purposes.

Just under four months before this, kidnappers took David Balland, who helped found the cryptocurrency firm Ledger, and his wife from their home in central France.

Police freed Mr. Balland and his wife shortly after the kidnapping, but not before the kidnappers amputated his finger.

The criminals attempted to extort €10 million, or roughly £8.5 million, in ransom. Law enforcement detained seven suspects, including one woman and six men, in connection with the case.

This case is the latest in a series of global abduction attempts aimed at extorting money from crypto users and their families, whom the kidnappers assume hold substantial wealth.

During an abduction in downtown Toronto in November 2024, kidnappers took Dean Skurka, CEO of WonderFi, and coerced him into paying a $1 million ransom in cryptocurrency.

The following month, a kidnapper took the wife of crypto investor and influencer Stéphane Winkel from their home in Belgium. Police rescued her after the kidnapper crashed his car in a dramatic chase.

In February 2025, the FBI charged six suspects in Chicago with kidnapping a family and their nanny in exchange for a ransom in crypto.

The kidnappers tricked their way into the home in Chicago by feigning a broken mechanical garage door, as stated in an FBI report.

After gaining entry, the suspects forced the family into a van, held them captive for five days, and ultimately forced them to give up $15 million in cryptocurrencies to secure their release.

Whether the recent spate of crypto kidnappings is connected remains unclear.

“Obviously there’s at least a link in the modus operandi. Now, whether it’s the same team or not is for the investigators to say.” said internal security expert Guillaume Farde.

In 2020, the founder of Onboard, Yele Bademosi, revealed at the height of the ENDSARS protest in Nigeria how members of the infamous and now disbanded Special Anti-Robbery Squad, popularly known as SARS, kidnapped him and demanded N1,000,000.

“They forced me to open my US bank accounts and said I should transfer USD from my Bank of America account to my GTB. I cried and prayed because I didn’t know what to do and couldn’t understand why and how this was happening. It was one of the scariest experiences of my life.”