Crypto kidnappings have been on the rise around the globe thanks to the increasing value of the currency and the low-risk factor for the criminals, according to experts.
“What we’ve seen in the last eight or nine months is a massive increase in the frequency and frankly the ruthlessness of these types of attacks,” Adam Healy, a former US Marine and founder of the security firm Station70, told The Post.
“It kind of coordinates with the price of bitcoin going up,” he said. “Then there’s been some successful ransom payouts primarily in Canada and Europe, which have now gotten the attention of a broader criminal base, which sees this as effectively easy money.”
Healy, who advises companies how to stave off the attacks, said it makes sense that they’re increasing.
“If you actually think about it it makes total sense,” Healy said. “It’s a lot easier – lower risk – and it’s a much bigger payout than, say, robbing a bank or robbing a convenience store. You’re not going to get in a gunfight while you’re trying to leave the bank.”
Cryptocurrencies have surged in value, with bitcoin up 54% in the last year, and is also much more difficult to track than dollars, he pointed out.
The attacks, which have been increasing around the world, have been particularly prevalent in France recently.
In one an attempted abduction earlier this month, the daughter and grandson of a French cryptocurrency boss in Paris were almost kidnapped in broad daylight by four masked men who jumped out of a van.
The men tried to pull the woman, who was with her husband and their 2-year-old son, into their van in the French capital.
“Let go of me!” the woman yelled as the attackers bludgeoned the husband.
A passerby armed with a fire extinguisher chased off the men by threatening to throw it at them.
Earlier this month, the father of a man who made a fortune in cryptocurrency was tortured and doused with gasoline after he was abducted in broad daylight from the street in Paris. His kidnappers cut off one of his fingers.
In the past, cryptocurrency investors primarily worried about hacking but have been using physical storage devices to make that nearly impossible.
“A lot of people are getting to the hide-your-gold-under-the-mattress level of security,” Jameson Lopp, the co-founder of bitcoin security company Casa, told The Wall Street Journal recently. “But if you are a high-profile person…that’s when you have to worry about the physical attack.”
Healy, the security expert, teaches classes to small groups of investors about what they can do to protect themselves and what to do if they are, in fact, taken.
One method is to have a plan in place to offer the abductors something else of value, he said.
“I can’t give you the $10 million,” he tells his students to say. “But I can give you $1 million that is liquid if you let me go.”
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