French authorities have charged 25 people, including six minors, for their roles in a spate of crypto kidnappings in Paris, with the majority of the suspects connected to the recent failed kidnapping attempt of a crypto exchange CEO’s family, Paris’s public prosecutor’s office said, Le Monde reported Saturday.
The investigation is focused on the kidnapping attempt of the daughter and grandson of the CEO of crypto exchange Paymium, Pierre Noizat, that occurred on May 13, the report said.
The probe also looked at other unsuccessful kidnapping attempts, including an earlier attempt on Noizat’s family members, plus an attempted abduction near the western city of Nantes last Monday that authorities thwarted.
The arrests follow a spate of high-profile crypto kidnappings that have plagued France this year.
In May the father of a French crypto millionaire was kidnapped, the BBC reported. At the start of the year David Ballard, a co-founder of crypto-wallet developer Ledger was kidnapped alongside his wife. Both of the men had a finger severed, with videos of the appendage used to extract a ransom.
Following the recent kidnappings France’s Minister of the Interior Bruno Retailleau hosted a meeting with crypto stakeholders in May to discuss measures to keep them secure.
The suspects involved in the May 13 case were between the ages of 16 and 23 years; six of them were minors, the Le Monde report said. They were mostly born in France while three individuals were from Senegal, Angola and Russia, the report cited prosecutors as saying.
This case is characterized by “very young profiles, lured by money and then caught up in a situation that is beyond them,” observed lawyer Ambroise Vienet-Legué, who is defending an 18-year-old suspect in the Nantes part of the case, the report said.
A source familiar with the investigation told CoinDesk that the suspects are believed to be locally-hired muscle, who are paid by a criminal operation in Southeast Asia to carry out the kidnappings for as little as $10,000.
Eighteen people are in pre-trial detention, three have requested a deferred hearing while four are under judicial supervision, the public prosecutor said.
Though France has been the epicenter of crypto kidnappings, similar crimes are on the rise across the globe, including recent several cases in the U.S.
CoinDesk reached out to Paris’s prosecution office for a comment.
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