In brief
- A cryptocurrency executive and his family were beaten and bound during a Friday home invasion in Verneuil-sur-Seine.
- It’s the latest such “$5 wrench attack” targeting wealthy crypto holders in the country.
- The attack came just a day after another crypto investor was kidnapped from his home near Cholet, assaulted, and dumped 50 kilometers away.
Armed assailants stormed a family home in Verneuil-sur-Seine on Friday evening, launching a brutal attack on a crypto investment executive and his family in what has become the latest “wrench attack” to rock France’s crypto community.
Three gunmen forced their way into the residence around nighttime, beating both parents before restraining the couple and their two children with cable ties, French news outlet Le Parisien reported.
The family managed to break free and sought refuge with neighbors while the attackers fled toward a nearby train station, according to the report.
The violent home invasion caps a week of rising crypto-related crime across France, highlighting a disturbing pattern that has established the country as a European epicenter for wrench attacks, physical assaults designed to force victims to hand over crypto holdings.
One day before the Verneuil-sur-Seine attack, kidnappers abducted a 43-year-old man from his residence in Saint-Léger-sous-Cholet during the early morning hours of Friday.
The victim was bound, beaten, and later abandoned in Basse-Goulaine, roughly 50 kilometers from his home, before being hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries, Ouest-France reported.
Investigators from the Specialized Interregional Jurisdiction of Rennes confirmed the attackers were after the victim’s crypto, after his family had already faced multiple attempted break-ins over the Christmas holidays.
“France has recently experienced one of the most visible waves of violent, crypto-linked kidnappings and extortion attempts in the EU,” cybercrime consultant David Sehyeon Baek told Decrypt.
Earlier last week, three masked intruders broke into a home in Manosque, holding a woman at gunpoint while they stole a USB drive containing her partner’s crypto credentials.
Silence over safety
The spike in violent crypto crime has exposed serious vulnerabilities in how criminals identify potential targets.
Last June, French prosecutors charged a tax official with abusing access to government databases to identify crypto investors and allegedly pass their personal and financial details to organized crime groups.
Baek warned that this has raised concerns about how criminals are identifying targets, including the potential misuse of tax or other confidential data.
“Given France’s relatively high crime rates, it is not particularly difficult to argue that the country could see more crimes like this,” he said. “What we are really seeing is just the tip of the iceberg. Crypto crime is indeed heavily underreported, and that is not accidental.”
He explained that victims frequently avoid filing reports because “reporting a crypto crime often means exposing far more than just the crime itself, as it can mean revealing wallet sizes, transaction histories, trading behavior, and possible tax or compliance issues that people would rather keep private.”
“Victims weigh the low chance of recovering funds against the high perceived risk of tax trouble, wealth exposure, reputational damage, or even physical danger,” he added. “For many, staying quiet feels safer than speaking up.”
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