Four masked men broke into a family home in Vendin-le-Vieil, northern France, in the early hours of September 20, restrained a couple and their two children with tape, and forced the father to transfer roughly €40,000 in cryptocurrency before fleeing.

The intrusion began at around 4 a.m., when the group forced its way into the house. The father was separated from his partner and their children and subjected to threats and physical violence as the attackers pressed him for the access credentials to his crypto holdings. The ordeal lasted nearly three hours.

The father eventually freed himself and raised the alarm, and emergency services reached the residence at around 7 a.m.

Father Pressed for Authentication Codes

The couple's children are eight and 12 years old. The 12-year-old girl suffered a minor head injury during the attack, and the father was struck several times as the assailants demanded his authentication codes.

Béthune public prosecutor Étienne Thieffry confirmed that an investigation has been opened on charges of unlawful confinement and organized extortion, offenses that carry potential prison sentences of up to 20 years. Investigators from Pas-de-Calais, Nord, and France's anti-cybercrime office are handling the case. No arrests had been made as of the latest update, and police are also working to determine how the attackers identified the father as a cryptocurrency holder.

The incident follows the September killings of Mexican musician Jonathan Meléndez, his pregnant wife, their three-year-old daughter, and a household worker in what investigators described as a suspected Bitcoin cold-wallet robbery. Authorities in that case alleged the attackers were searching for a wallet believed to contain millions of dollars in Bitcoin. Taken together, the two cases illustrate why physical coercion is treated as a distinct threat category in crypto security: cold-wallet storage is designed to keep assets beyond the reach of remote attackers, but it offers no barrier when holders are confronted in person.

France Remains Center of Crypto Wrench Attacks

France has become one of the main centers of physical attacks targeting cryptocurrency holders and their families — so-called wrench attacks, in which assailants coerce the person holding the keys rather than attack the underlying technology. A count cited earlier this year attributed roughly 70% of reported wrench attacks to the country, with 135 crypto-related violent incidents recorded in France since 2023 under the broader national tally.

CertiK's narrower verified dataset recorded 33 attacks in France during the first half of 2026, representing 63.5% of its worldwide total and 84.6% of European incidents. Home invasions rose sharply over the period, while kidnappings remained another major attack category.

Family members have increasingly been used to pressure people connected to crypto. In May, attackers attempted to abduct the wife of The Sandbox cofounder Sébastien Borget from the couple's home in Seine-et-Marne before neighbors intervened. Chainalysis found that relatives or associates were targeted in more than 40% of French incidents in its dataset — a pattern echoed in Vendin-le-Vieil, where the children were restrained alongside their parents.

The four suspects in the Vendin-le-Vieil attack remained at large as the investigation continued, leaving open whether arrests will follow and how the father came to be identified as a cryptocurrency holder in the first place.