Crypto Kidnapping Ring Busted: 25 Arrested in Paris, Mastermind Still at Large

Agents from the Brigade for the Repression of Banditry (BRB) in Paris have opened a judicial investigation for "attempted kidnapping by an organized gang" and "criminal conspiracy" following two attempted kidnappings of Pierre Noizat’s daughter, CEO of a cryptocurrency exchange company, on May 12 and 13 in the 11th arrondissement of Paris, and a planned kidnapping of one of the founders of a Bitcoin mining company and his wife on May 26 in Couëron (Loire-Atlantique). Investigators are trying to establish links between these cases and two other violent kidnappings that occurred in the last six months, including that of David Balland, a cryptocurrency genius, in Cher. The common mastermind of all kidnappings is believed to be hiding in Morocco, according to Le Parisien.

In a summary report, investigators uncovered a vast criminal network, "a multi-level mafia organization," composed of "young executors ready for any atrocity to satisfy their desire for easy money" and "acting on instructions." The gang had planned to kidnap Pierre Noizat’s daughter in Paris on May 12. The 34-year-old target was to be forcibly taken into a van in the middle of the street, then transferred to a second van before being held in a secret Airbnb rental. She would be released when her father paid a ransom. But for various reasons, this plan did not unfold as intended. On May 13, members of the network again attempted to kidnap the daughter of the CEO of the crypto company Paymium. In a van parked on rue Pache (Paris 11th), near a school, they were watching for the victim, who was pregnant and coming to pick up her two-year-old son.

The intervention of the target’s partner and a local resident forced the criminals to abandon their sinister project. Thanks to surveillance cameras, three of them were identified as minors barely 16 and 17 years old. Investigators also managed to identify the vans used by this network to commit their crimes. One of them, a Renault Trafic, was found parked in Nanterre (Hauts-de-Seine). BRB agents noticed that it had been re-plated and bore logos of the "Rent and drop" company. Another van of the same model labeled "Aux Bons déménageurs" was identified just steps away from the first, in this isolated area in an industrial zone. Investigators suspect the preparation of a new kidnapping project.

Investigators discovered that members of the criminal network were planning to simultaneously kidnap a wealthy cryptocurrency entrepreneur and his partner on Monday, May 26, at precisely 10:10 AM. Again, nothing went as planned. Police officers from the BRB, assisted by the Research and Intervention Brigade (BRI) of Paris, managed to foil their plans. Eight individuals, aged between 17 and 23, were arrested in the two vans as they were about to take action. The driver of one of the vans is a young man barely 17 years old without a driver’s license. The suspects were born in Paris and Senegal for one of them and all reside in the Paris region (Seine-Saint-Denis, Val-de-Marne, Essonne).

Investigators found gloves, balaclavas, tear gas canisters, as well as M15-type rifles and Glock-type pistols, an iPhone 8 connected to the Waze navigation app, on which the targets’ address had been entered, in the vans. Simultaneously, the Paris Criminal Investigation Department carried out arrests in the Paris region, including logisticians and lieutenants. For the investigators, all these suspects constitute "an easily recruited workforce, infinitely interchangeable, but always having as a common thread a sense of impunity and gratuitous violence." "We are witnessing a Taylorization of organized crime: each young person performs a micro-task, often for almost nothing, sometimes under pressure. It’s distressing. For so little, they risk heavy sentences and ruin their future," lamented the lawyers of one of the suspects.