French gendarmes have been busy policing crypto crimes, however these aren’t the same old monetary schemes, cons, and HODL! shenanigans one normally reads about. No, these crimes contain abductions, (a number of) severed fingers, and (a number of) individuals rescued from the trunks of automobiles—as soon as after being doused with gasoline.

This earlier weekend was significantly nuts, with an older gentleman snatched from the streets of Paris’ 14th arrondissement on Could 1 by males in ski masks. The 14th is a nice place—I extremely advocate a go to to the catacombs in Place Denfert-Rochereau—and never normally the positioning of snatch-and-grab operations. The kidnapped man was apparently the daddy of somebody who had made a packet in crypto. The abductors demanded a multimillion-euro ransom from the person’s son.

In accordance with Le Monde, the kidnapped father was taken to a home in a Parisian suburb, the place one of many father’s fingers was minimize off in the middle of ransom negotiations. Police feared “different mutilations” in the event that they have been unable to seek out the person, however they did find and raid the home this weekend, arresting 5 individuals of their 20s. (In accordance with the BBC, French police used “cellphone alerts” to find the home.)

Sounds loopy, however this was the second such incident this yr. In January, crypto maven David Balland was additionally kidnapped alongside together with his companion on January 21. Balland was taken to a home, the place he additionally had a finger minimize off. In accordance with The Guardian, “Police have been contacted by Balland’s enterprise companion, who obtained a video of the finger alongside a requirement for a big ransom in cryptocurrency, of round €10m. Balland was freed in a police raid quickly after. His companion was discovered tied up within the boot of a automobile in a carpark within the Essonne space south of Paris the subsequent day.”

And some weeks earlier than that, attackers went to the house of somebody whose son was a “crypto-influencer based mostly in Dubai.” On the father’s house, the abductors “tied up [the father’s] spouse and daughter and compelled him right into a automobile. The person’s influencer son obtained a ransom demand and contacted police. The 2 girls have been then shortly freed. The daddy was solely found 24 hours later within the boot of a automobile in Normandy, tied up and displaying indicators of bodily violence, having been sprinkled with petrol.”