Ledger Co-Founder Freed After Kidnappers Demand Crypto Ransom

Kidnapped last Tuesday morning at their home in Méreau in the Cher, then taken to Châteauroux, held hostage in several places, David Balland, co-founder and former employee of Ledger, and his companion were released the next day. This release was only possible thanks to the alert given by Eric Larchevêque, co-founder of the company. According to a source close to the case, he received a video of a mutilated finger of David Balland and a ransom demand. The kidnappers or kidnappers demanded a large cryptocurrency ransom - 10 million euros, which "was to go to accounts in Morocco," Le Parisien believes.

Nearly 3 million euros were paid as part of the negotiation with a member of Ledger’s technical management, in coordination with the cybercops, but the majority of the cryptocurrencies were seized and frozen.

On Thursday, ten people from various departments - Seine-Saint-Denis, Essonne, Paris, but also Marseille - were arrested in Bourges (Cher), near the kidnapping site, as well as in Châteauroux (Indre) and Étampes (Essonne), "where the two victims were successively held hostage", then placed in custody. The next day, seven of them were brought before an investigating judge in Paris with a view to probable indictment. The prosecution has requested their placement in pre-trial detention. As for the three others, they were released.

During their interrogations, they confessed to having been recruited by the true heads of the network, on social networks and in isolation. They also claimed that they "did not know each other and the organization would have been compartmentalized". The suspects said they were paid "a few thousand euros". Currently, the investigators are trying to identify the mastermind of the organization. On Friday, the public prosecutor’s office of the National Jurisdiction for the Fight against Organized Crime (Junalco) in charge of the investigations opened a judicial investigation for multiple counts: "kidnapping and sequestration with acts of torture or barbarity and in an organized gang", "extortion in an organized gang", "aggravated money laundering", "criminal conspiracy"... Some of the suspects face life imprisonment.