Why So Many Kidnapping Cases in Crypto?

When people think of kidnapping, they think of Hollywood. Taken if you grew up in the 2000s, Commando if you are a fan of the 80s action films. To most it's something that happens only in movies.

And yet crypto made kidnapping mundane.

The most spectacular kidnapping from the last months was the January 2025 strike on Ledger cofounder David Balland (image below), who along with his wife was kidnapped from their home in central France. The kidnappers did not simply want money: they cut off one of Balland’s fingers and sent him an image of the wound, demanding that he send them millions of euros in crypto as ransom. It is hard to describe such a scenario in a way that would not make one’s skin crawl, for Balland’s predicament is at once more terrifying and more banal than any Hollywood blockbuster. The co-founder of the company that protects people from financial violence was himself subjected to physical violence. France was not done: in one case, the father of a crypto millionaire was kidnapped and allegedly mutilated as criminals demanded millions in ransom from his son. Note how the criminals reasoned: they did not need to take the money from the son, who presumably had crypto wallets with astronomical amounts of cash - they simply needed to inflict pain on the father. Again, a kidnapping that smacks more of primitive humanity than of financial instrumentalism. Finally, in another incident, the daughter and grandson of Paymium chief Pierre Noizat were kidnapped in Paris in an attempt to extort crypto ransom from the CEO. Once again, the kidnappers’ actions were at once crude and financially rational - they simply reasoned that the easiest way to get their hands on some crypto was to take it from a person.

Across the ocean, the SoHo case in New York was making headlines: prosecutors accused John Woeltz and William Duplessie of perpetrating a “financial kidnapping,” holding an Italian man hostage in a luxury townhouse for more than two weeks and subjecting him to regular torture sessions, among other things, in an effort to obtain his Bitcoin wallet. Allegedly, Woeltz and Duplessie even threatened to kill the victim’s family, use a chainsaw on him, and doused his body with burning tequila. Whether the defendants actually did all of these things will be decided in court, but the mere fact that a person was held captive for more than two weeks in an affluent neighborhood is enough to make one reconsider their opinion on crypto riches. Again, it is not the richness that is shocking (people can be richer in fiat as well), it is the ease with which it can be taken, with ransom set, with the victim’s life threatened. Crypto kidnapping is a crime of opportunity, of greed, and of the feeling of being entitled to the victim’s money.

Meanwhile, over in Canada, WonderFi CEO Dean Skurka was kidnapped in late 2024 in downtown Toronto and forced to pay the ransom, allegedly. Subsequently, the company announced heavy losses due to the kidnapping and related security expenses. Again, this is not the story of a disorganized third-world area, but of a first-world city, white-collar criminals, and ransomware tactics that have become all too familiar in the crypto sphere. Closer to home (or rather, to Madrid), Spain has had its share of crypto kidnappings: a thwarted kidnapping attempt on a Canadian crypto entrepreneur, with zip ties, pepper spray, pills, and a van with falsified license plates, a heist gone wrong in southern Spain, resulting in one victim’s death and another’s kidnapping - all in pursuit of crypto.

Why the Body Became the Wallet

Cryptographic kidnapping is not difficult to understand, if one takes a criminal’s perspective. In the traditional kidnapping scenario, the criminal’s payoff is directly proportional to the difficulty of the task: the more valuable the victim is, the harder it is to take them. This is why governments are so heavily involved in major kidnapping cases: the potential payoff for successful kidnapping of a government leader is enormous, but so is the degree of difficulty of achieving it. A private criminal is much more likely to go after a wealthy individual. But even there, his options vary according to the victim’s degree of protection. If the individual has substantial resources, the criminal will go after them in a way that will maximize his chances of succeeding: a private bank account is easier to steal from than a vault in a bank, even if the bank has more money in it overall.

Crypto makes a potential victim much more attractive to criminals, while changing the criminal’s risks. In crypto kidnapping, the victim is the institution, their private key the vault. The private key can be anywhere: the phone, the laptop, the safe at home, even the victim’s own memory. The criminal need only figure out where and threaten the appropriate body part. A traditional kidnapping involves convincing banks to transfer money to the kidnapper’s account, whereas in a crypto kidnapping, the criminal has turned the victim into a bank. It is not surprising that crypto kidnapping is becoming so commonplace.

Why is crypto wealth so attractive to kidnappers? Firstly, because it is very easy to determine the potential victim: his name may not be on the blockchain, but the wallet itself is public, and the number of crypto billionaires is growing by the day. Secondly, people perceive crypto wealth as easy money: crypto is programmable money, and the program can be hacked. Thirdly, crypto kidnapping is much more lucrative than traditional kidnapping: even a medium-sized ransom in crypto will provide a substantial reward to the kidnapper.

It must also be said that crypto kidnapping is much more desirable from the criminal’s point of view because it is much more reliable, predictable, and discreet. Traditional kidnapping necessarily involves the risk of getting caught by the police, while with crypto, everything is much simpler and more reliable: the coins stay on the blockchain, and the kidnapper only has to ensure that he knows where they are. This is why many kidnappers are turning to crypto: not only do they benefit from the relative anonymity of the technology, but they also have more ways to profit from it.

Why France Became the Crypto Kidnapping Capital of the World?

Why is it that France appears to be the favorite destination for kidnapping crypto oligarchs? Partly because there has been a wave of financial privacy breaches recently in France that involved crypto investors. Some of the cases of kidnapping wealthy individuals for ransom were linked to the leak of information tied to crypto investors, while others involved crypto-related services whose data has been leaked.

This is yet another reason why crypto can be much more dangerous than traditional forms of wealth: the private key is only as safe as the weakest link in the security chain. One compromised smart contract, one insecure exchange, one improperly handled KYC procedure, and all the crypto wealth that the victim thought was safe is gone. It is true that in the traditional financial system, the equivalent of a compromised smart contract would be a bank employee who decides to steal from the bank, but the point is that with crypto, every aspect of the financial system, from exchanges to wallets to smart contracts, is potentially vulnerable.

For this reason, crypto kidnapping often involves a specific set of tactics and targets, which are dictated by the circumstances of each case. As a criminal, your options are limited by the potential victim’s attractiveness and your own means. A kidnapper needs to answer the following questions in order to come up with the most attractive target: What is the potential victim’s net worth? Does he have any relatives nearby? What is the potential victim’s mode of transport? Does he have any identifying features such as expensive watches? Does the potential victim have a high public profile or post about his crypto wealth on social media?

It is this kind of reasoning that leads to crypto kidnappings typically involving not the most attractive victims, but private individuals. The most attractive victims are usually well-protected and have little publicly available information about them. Private individuals, on the other hand, have few security measures and may be easy to lure because they are not used to being targeted. This is why so many kidnappings for ransom involve not the victim himself but one of his relatives or close friends, who are less likely to have personal security measures. It is the easiest way to obtain a wallet with significant crypto holdings for the criminal, because the victim’s family is unlikely to have any knowledge of crypto security practices.

An unpopular opinion about crypto kidnappings is that the problem stems not from the crypto itself but from the industry’s culture of self-promotion and paranoia. Some crypto adherents engage in behaviors that make them stand out, which makes targeting them easier for criminals. Cryptographic defenders often boast about their anonymity, but in reality, most of them are not as secretive as they think. An anonymity leak can happen in many ways: from choosing a public wallet to publishing transaction details on social media.

Crypto influencers frequently leak personal information, such as their location or physical appearance, inadvertently providing criminals with potential methods of attack. Moreover, individuals who operate their own crypto wallets run the risk of becoming targets by association. Crypto influencers and entrepreneurs have the ability to significantly impact the value of crypto projects and thus become targets for kidnapping.

Crypto companies are also vulnerable to kidnapping for ransom, despite implementing various security measures. The company’s management, with its extensive knowledge of the product and access to critical information, can be a target for kidnapping, as the ransom would cover the company’s losses. At the same time, ordinary employees may know details that could be useful to kidnappers, such as information about the company’s security measures.

Traditional wealthy groups, such as banks, jewelry stores, or even businesses dealing with cash, have been targets of kidnapping for ransom, but the security measures available to them are limited to personal security details, transport security, and so on. Crypto companies have an advantage over traditional ones in terms of technology but may lack other important aspects of security, such as personal security details. In addition, the personal behavior of individuals is important: if an entrepreneur is careless and sloppy, they can become a target for kidnapping, despite having sufficient digital security measures.

It is difficult to say which of the stated reasons is the most important. However, it should be emphasized that while ransom kidnappings in the traditional sense are usually the result of personal interactions between criminals and victims, crypto kidnappings are much more complex. They are guided by a variety of factors, ranging from the location of potential victims to their financial status.

Desire Behind the Violence: Why These Abductions Happen

It is hard to believe that all of the above incidents were the result of spontaneous decisions. While some criminals may simply be driven by the promise of a large ransom, there are undoubtedly some unique motivations that led to these abductions. There is a particularly compelling theory about why crypto kidnappings are occurring: the victim’s crypto assets were obtained through what is perceived as illegitimate or fraudulent means.

The motivation for traditional kidnapping for ransom is usually based on the desire to obtain the victim’s personal wealth. This can include cash, jewelry, real estate, collectibles, and other valuable items that the victim possesses. The situation is similar in crypto kidnapping, with the victim’s wealth being represented by cryptocurrencies. However, there is an important difference: the potential victim’s net worth in traditional kidnapping is difficult to determine, requiring extensive investigation. In crypto kidnapping, on the other hand, almost anyone can see how much crypto the victim holds on the blockchain. This makes it much easier to identify a target. Additionally, crypto assets are much easier to steal than traditional ones, which is an additional factor that attracts criminals.

In addition to the purely material motivation, potential criminals may have non-material motivations for kidnapping a crypto holder. For example, some people may believe that a particular victim has accumulated a considerable amount of wealth through dishonest means and therefore has “deserved” it. This attitude may be due to the fact that crypto is often viewed by society as something that is earned through speculation on the market. It is much easier to find people who are dissatisfied with the wealth of a successful crypto trader than, say, a successful businessman. Traditional kidnapping for ransom rarely involves situations in which the kidnapper does not want to kill the victim since, in most cases, the victim’s wealth is tied directly to his life. In crypto kidnapping, however, the situation is different: the potential victim’s crypto assets can be viewed as separate from his life, allowing the kidnapper to decide whether to kill the victim or not based on whether he pays the ransom.

It should also be noted that kidnapping for ransom often involves not only material motivations but also psychological ones, such as the desire to humiliate or harass the victim. Crypto kidnapping for ransom is not much different in this regard: abductors may feel entitled to exert psychological pressure on the victim, hold him hostage, hurt him, or even kill him.

This leaves him with only one tool: the victim’s body, which is why kidnapping for ransom in crypto often involves psychological harassment of the victim. It becomes a way to coerce him into doing what the kidnapper wants. Such coercive measures can include threats of physical harm to the victim, his relatives, and even pets. They can include direct infliction of damage and extortion.

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