INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
French gendarmes have been busy policing crypto crimes, but these aren't the usual financial schemes, cons, and HODL! shenanigans one
doused with gasoline.This previous weekend was particularly nuts, with an older gentleman snatched from the streets of Paris' 14th
arrondissement on May 1 by men in ski masks
snatch-and-grab operations
The abducted man was apparently the father of someone who had made a packet in crypto
The kidnappers demanded a multimillion-euro ransom from the man's son.According to Le Monde, the abducted father was taken to a house in a
Parisian suburb, where one of the father's fingers was cut off in the course of ransom negotiations
Police feared "other mutilations" if they were unable to find the man, but they did locate and raid the house this weekend, arresting five
(According to the BBC, French police used "phone signals" to locate the house.)Sounds crazy, but this was the second such incident this year
In January, crypto maven David Balland was also abducted along with his partner on January 21
Balland was taken to a house, where he also had a finger cut off
Balland was freed in a police raid soon after
His partner was found tied up in the boot of a car in a carpark in the Essonne area south of Paris the next day."And a few weeks before
that, attackers went to the home of someone whose son was a "crypto-influencer based in Dubai." At the father's home, the kidnappers "tied
up [the father's] wife and daughter and forced him into a car
The two women were then quickly freed
The father was only discovered 24 hours later in the boot of a car in Normandy, tied up and showing signs of physical violence, having been
