This week, a cryptocurrency investor reported receiving threats via Telegram, according to a police source. On Wednesday night, while on a business trip in Switzerland, he received messages and calls from an individual who didn't mince words, going so far as to ask: "If I kidnap your brother, how much ransom will you pay?"
The tone is brutal, almost clinical, as if extortion had become a simple transaction. According to the same sources, the businessman also received information and photos of his parents' and brother's homes, indicating that the reconnaissance was already well underway.
When crypto also attracts predators
On Thursday morning around 9 a.m., the brother, also described as being involved in the world of cryptocurrencies, contacted the police. In the Hauts-de-Seine department, officers went to the brother's home and to the parents' home, both located in the same department, encouraging the victims to file a complaint. The Nanterre public prosecutor's office has opened an investigation, entrusted to a specialized investigative unit, amid growing concern about extortion targeting cryptocurrency holders, against a backdrop of fears of "cryptorapts" operating within the country.
Investigators are particularly interested in understanding how such precise personal data could have been obtained and in exploiting the traces left by digital exchanges, because in these cases, the threat sometimes only exists on a screen… before wanting to cross the front door.
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