Have Paris police investigators uncovered a criminal organization specializing in kidnapping and demanding ransoms from cryptocurrency entrepreneurs and their relatives? On Monday, May 26, and Tuesday, May 27, two waves of arrests resulted in about 20 people being taken into custody. They are suspected of being linked to two separate cases that share similar methods and were, in all likelihood, orchestrated by a single mastermind operating from abroad.
The first wave of arrests took place near the western French city of Nantes on Monday, May 26, when roughly 10 masked criminals using two vans were preparing to kidnap two relatives of a cryptocurrency entrepreneur. The second targeted a team suspected of taking part in another attempted kidnapping on May 13, on a street in Paris's 11th arrondissement. In that case, the woman targeted and her partner resisted, and a neighbor armed with a fire extinguisher intervened, causing the attackers to flee. The 34-year-old woman, mother of a two-year-old boy, is the daughter of the founder of Paymium, a cryptocurrency exchange platform.
You have 89.9% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.