A couple was taken from their home in Rion-des-Landes, a town in southwestern France, in the early hours of Aug. 11 in an alleged Bitcoin extortion attack, as crypto-linked violence continues to rise across the country.

According to the report, several attackers entered the property at around 4 a.m. on the night of Aug. 10-11 and threatened the two residents while demanding access to their Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency holdings. After the confrontation, the attackers removed both victims from the home and took them to separate locations.

The man was later found in Solférino, roughly 20 kilometers away. He was naked and had several cuts on his body when authorities located him. His condition, and whether he required hospital treatment, were not disclosed. The woman was found inside a vehicle in a different French department. Authorities did not release her location, her condition, or how investigators came to find her.

The names, professions, and cryptocurrency holdings of the couple have not been released. It also remains unknown whether either victim worked in the crypto sector or had publicly discussed owning digital assets.

Police Response and Arrests

French gendarmes deployed quickly after the abduction and stopped vehicles on the road connecting Rion-des-Landes and Lesperon, in an operation that involved a large number of officers. Investigators returned to the couple's home the following day to collect fingerprints and examine the property.

Two men were arrested shortly after the incident. Their identities, ages, and suspected roles have not been made public, and it is unclear whether they remain in custody.

France's National Anti-Organized Crime Prosecutor's Office confirmed that the case is being handled by the Bordeaux specialized jurisdiction. No charges have been publicly announced, and authorities have not confirmed whether any cryptocurrency was transferred or whether wallet credentials were obtained during the attack. The scale of the deployment and the referral to specialized organized-crime prosecutors reflect how French law enforcement has retooled since a wave of high-profile crypto abductions in 2025, when authorities created a police unit dedicated to crypto kidnappings and opened an emergency hotline for holders facing threats.

France's Rising Crypto Crime Problem

The abduction comes amid a sharp rise in crypto-linked violence in France. In January 2025, kidnappers seized Ledger co-founder David Balland and his wife from their home in Vierzon, cut off one of Balland's fingers as part of a crypto ransom demand, and held the couple until a police raid freed him. Months later, attackers in Paris abducted the father of a crypto holder and severed his finger before police rescued him. The country recorded 77 crypto-linked violent cases in 2026, according to Interior Minister Laurent Nunez, up from 45 cases in 2025. Around 200 people have been arrested in connection with these attacks.

A Chainalysis report counted 30 publicly known violent crypto incidents in France through the first half of 2026 alone, compared with 19 for all of 2025. Globally, criminals stole more than $30 million through physical attacks in the first half of 2026. Chainalysis put the success rate of such attacks at 26%, down from 49% in 2025.

Home invasions made up 37% of documented attacks through mid-2026, up from 14% in 2025. In France, more than 40% of cases targeted a relative or associate of the crypto holder rather than the holder directly. The crime type exploits a distinctive property of self-custodied assets: unlike a bank transfer, a crypto transaction cannot be frozen or reversed once it is broadcast, and funds are controlled by private keys and seed phrases held by individuals — a dynamic security researchers cite in describing such incidents as “wrench attacks,” where coercion substitutes for hacking.

Chainalysis linked this targeting pattern to leaked tax records and social media data, pointing to a 2024 alleged theft of French tax files and a January breach at crypto tax platform Waltio that affected around 50,000 users.

Unresolved questions in the Rion-des-Landes case include whether charges will be brought against the two men arrested, whether any cryptocurrency taken can be traced on-chain, and whether further arrests follow as investigators process fingerprints and other evidence collected from the property.

Source: CoinCentral; primary post on X: FranceCryptos.