Nighttime attack in Alès: a family kidnapped in an investigation into attacks linked to cryptocurrencies

Forewarned is forearmed. Saturday, around five a.m., armed individuals forced entry to an apartment in Alès, in the Gard. The couple who were sleeping were tied up and then threatened for several hours, a young child also being in the home. The victims' screams eventually alerted neighbors, who called the police. The two attackers fled when the police arrived and remain actively sought at the time of writing. A modus operandi which, in France, more and more often sticks to a very specific motive, the tracking down of holders of cryptocurrencies, even when nothing yet confirms that the target actually held such assets.

A nocturnal intrusion, a family without history

The targeted couple, however, has no known history to the police and has no apparent link with drug banditry, according to the first elements reported locally. A characteristic that often comes up in this type of file.

Indeed, criminals no longer only attack well-known personalities in the crypto community, they attack profiles identified in advance, sometimes wrongly, via stolen data files or simple leaks accumulated over the years. An investigation has been opened to establish the exact circumstances of this home confinement, locally described as a robbery.

In fact, therefore, the suggestion of a link with the cryptocurrency market, mentioned by the local press, would be part of an already long series of similar facts recorded this year throughout the country. There is currently no way to confirm that the couple actually held digital assets, or in what quantity, until the investigation has delivered its conclusions.

Crypto attacks: France at the head of a global phenomenon

The National Anti-Organized Crime Prosecutor's Office (PNACO) drew up an initial assessment on April 24: 18 cases recorded in 2024, 67 in 2025, and already 47 in the first four months of 2026, a rate which has continued to accelerate. Two months later, on June 30, Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez in turn mentioned 77 kidnappings and extortions linked to cryptoassets since January, a larger figure than that of the PNACO since it also includes attempts and a broader definition of the facts. Two counters, two methodologies, but the same trajectory: it’s climbing. These attacks, nicknamed wrench attacks in the industry, in reference to the tightening key used as a means of coercion rather than technical hacking, exploit the irreversibility of cryptocurrency transactions to force a transfer under threat. According to CertiK's Wrench Attack H1 2026 report, France concentrated 33 of the 52 cases verified worldwide in the first half of the year, or around two thirds of the documented total. A figure which says nothing good about the real protection of the personal data of French holders.