PANews reported on May 5th that French police successfully rescued the father of a cryptocurrency millionaire during a coordinated raid last Saturday evening (May 3rd). The victim was kidnapped in Paris the previous Thursday (May 1st).
It is reported that the kidnappers demanded a ransom of 5 to 7 million euros in cryptocurrency from the victim's family after the kidnapping, and to exert pressure, they severed one of the victim's fingers. The police eventually located and rescued the victim in a rented property in the Essonne area south of Paris, while arresting five suspects in their twenties on the spot. Authorities confirmed that no ransom was paid before the rescue operation.
A spokesperson for the prosecutor's office stated that the victim is the father of a businessman who gained wealth through cryptocurrency. This incident is the third kidnapping related to cryptocurrency that has occurred in France this year, and it is another case of what is known as a 'ransom attack' (i.e., using physical violence to extort cryptocurrency assets), similar to the kidnapping incident involving Ledger co-founder earlier this January.