France's Crypto Wrench Epidemic Goes Full Fake-Cop: €20K Nancy Beatdown Edition 🚔

A 32-year-old man from Vaujours has been indicted in Nancy over an alleged home-invasion attempt targeting a couple's cryptocurrency holdings, according to Le Parisien. The suspect, who has not been publicly named, faces charges of attempted extortion with a weapon, attempted kidnapping by an organized gang, and conspiracy to commit a crime.

Three men allegedly posed as police officers to accost a 45-year-old woman outside her apartment in Nancy (Meurthe-et-Moselle). Both she and her husband were "brutally beaten" after he came outside to investigate the noise, with the would-be robbers fleeing after the couple's daughters called police from inside the house. Investigators recovered plastic zip ties and a €5 note left at the scene, while witnesses described the attackers as having been armed with an Uzi submachine gun.

The attack reportedly came after the husband's roughly €20,000 in crypto holdings were exposed in a January data breach at French crypto tax reporting platform Waltio. That breach revealed email addresses, 2024 trading gains and losses, and cryptocurrency balances for approximately 50,000 users; the hackers responsible allegedly attempted to extort Waltio before selling the stolen data. In its after-the-fact advisory, Waltio warned that "the attackers use the fact that they know your email address and an approximate estimate of your assets to gain credibility," and could pose as fake customer services, police officers, and security services to carry out phishing attempts and scams.

The Nancy case fits a pattern of crypto-targeted violent crime across France. Recent months have seen the kidnapping and mutilation of Ledger co-founder David Balland, an armed home invasion, the abduction of a magistrate and her mother, and a kidnap attempt targeting the wife of "The Sandbox" co-founder Sébastien Borget. The attackers' alleged method also echoes a March incident in which three fake police officers held a couple at knifepoint and forced them to transfer roughly €900,000 (about $1 million) in Bitcoin ($BTC); authorities in the Versailles area are still searching for three suspects in that case.

Eric Larchevêque, Balland's business partner, last month condemned what he called the "Mexicanisation" of France in response to the spate of incidents. French Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau has pledged to convene cryptocurrency business leaders at the interior ministry to coordinate a response.