Two masked, armed men tied up a couple inside their home in Alès, southern France, and threatened them for more than two hours in an attempt to force cryptocurrency transfers.

The perpetrators escaped as police reached the property, and neither suspect has been arrested. France has experienced a long run of violent attacks on suspected crypto holders this year, making the Alès case part of a broader pattern of home invasions and extortion attempts that investigators and security firms have been tracking closely.

How much did the couple attacked in France hold in cryptocurrency?

The attack took place on Saturday in a residential area in the hills above Alès, in southern France. The intrusion began around 5 a.m., while the couple was asleep.

Two attackers wearing hoods and gloves, one carrying a handgun and the other a knife, restrained the victims and kept them under threat for more than two hours, demanding that valuables be handed over through cryptocurrency transactions. The couple’s young child was in the house throughout the ordeal.

The victims’ shouts alerted neighbors, who called officers from the Alès police station. The intruders fled when police arrived, leaving the couple behind.

The case has been referred to the Organized and Specialized Crime Division (DCOS) in Nîmes, formerly the judicial police.

The targeted couple reportedly has no known history with police and no apparent link to organized drug crime. Investigators have not confirmed that the pair actually held any digital assets, or in what amount, which underscores a recurring feature of these cases: attackers may be acting on assumptions or stolen personal data rather than verified on-chain holdings.

Attackers have increasingly been targeting people who were identified in advance using stolen data files and years of accumulated leaks.

The victims said they will “no longer hold any cryptoasset” in order to prevent future attacks.

About 80 similar assaults involving unlawful detentions or extortions linked to crypto have been recorded in France since January. Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said in July that France had recorded 77 cases of kidnapping, unlawful detention, extortion or attempted crimes linked to crypto by the end of June, compared with 45 cases for all of 2025.

Prosecutors at the national organized-crime unit PNACO said there were 18 cases recorded in 2024, 67 in 2025, and 47 in the first four months of 2026 alone. Roughly 200 people have been arrested after attacks or in preventive operations.

Why are wrench attacks so common in France?

CertiK’s H1 2026 wrench-attack report placed 33 of the 52 verified cases worldwide in France, or about 63.5% of the global total, with Europe accounting for 39. Home invasions in its dataset rose from a single case in the first half of 2025 to 20 a year later.

Data leaks are a major part of the explanation. As Cryptopolitan reported in August, a hacker was marketing tax records on more than 678,000 French individuals and companies stolen from the tax authority, the DGFiP, including names, addresses and income figures.

CertiK has also pointed to the case of a DGFiP official accused of querying crypto-holder profiles in government software and selling the data to criminal networks.

Before the Alès break-in, on the night of August 23 to 24 in Jouy-en-Josas, a 47-year-old man was held for around two hours by attackers who reportedly expected to obtain millions. They allegedly left with 3,000 euros instead.

Earlier, on the night of August 10 to 11, intruders entered a home in Rion-des-Landes, allegedly seeking access to a large amount of Bitcoin and other crypto. The repeated incidents have placed pressure on French authorities and highlighted how personal-data exposure can turn online asset ownership into an offline security risk.