Sunday October 11, a 47-year-old man was found riddled with bullets in his car in Nîmes. Fourteen convictions on the clock, an indictment for the kidnapping of a crypto entrepreneur and a release from pre-trial detention on a procedural error. Social networks delivered their verdict the next day: French justice would be too lax with crypto-kidnappings.
We wanted to check. Since the 88 indictments announced in the spring by the national anti-organized crime prosecutor's office, what have the courts actually pronounced? We went to get the judgments one by one. The result is summarized in a table and three observations: justice arrests many, judges few, and has not yet condemned any perpetrator of this wave on its soil.
Crypto-kidnappings: 135 facts, 88 indictments and five judgments
Let's start with the official counters. There are two of them, and they don't measure the same thing.
The first is judicial, it is that of the prosecution. On April 24, 2026, Vanessa Perrée, prosecutor of the very young national anti-organized crime prosecutor's office (Pnaco), presented hers. It lists 135 kidnappings or kidnappings linked to cryptos since 2023, including 18 in 2024, 67 in 2025 and already 47 in the first four months of 2026. In total, twelve active cases produced 88 indictments, including more than ten minors, and 75 pre-trial detentions. The magistrate speaks of “structured networks”.
The second counter, however, is a police officer. It was the one at Place Beauvau, who sent it to Cointelegraph at the beginning of October. It includes all violence linked to cryptos, not just kidnappings: 90 incidents between January 1 and mid-August 2026, or one every two and a half days. Over January-July, it also displays 223 arrests and 126 incarcerations. However, the ministry has never published them. He simply sent them to a media outlet that requested them, and admits that he has no equivalent statistics for 2025. It is impossible, with this counter alone, to measure a trend. That of Pnaco shows a clear acceleration.
As for judgments, on the other hand, the fingers of one hand are enough: faced with these hundreds of arrests, we have only identified five significant decisions, without counting a few judgments of minors rendered behind closed doors.
Everything else therefore waits its turn in the instruction rooms. The nine indicted for the kidnapping of David Balland, co-founder of Ledger who was mutilated in January 2025, still have no trial date to our knowledge. No more than the suspects in the kidnapping of a Grenoble magistrate in February or those in the Yonne kidnapping in April. Because for an organized gang crime involving torture, the investigation lasts years. This is the price of a criminal court.
Crypto-kidnappings: five sentences handed down from Amiens to Limoges
One of the first firm convictions for crypto-kidnapping in France fell on February 23 in Amiens. Two boys aged 19 and 24 had held a family from Revelles hostage on Halloween evening 2025, including their grandmother and young children. Their lawyer argued that two kids had been “sent to death”. As for the sponsor, no one has ever identified him. JDC followed the hearing.
In Paris, on April 1, the court tried three men whom the police had picked up at 5 a.m. in front of the door of a couple of investors in the 16th arrondissement. As they had not entered, the prosecution was only able to retain criminal association and attempted theft. The prosecutor spoke of “great amateurism”. The couple has since left France for the United States.
Ten years farm in Haute-Vienne
However, it is far from the big cities that the heaviest punishment falls. On May 29, a 22-year-old man was sentenced to ten years for a gun attack on a crypto holder in Saint-Paul, near Limoges. This is the ceiling of the qualification retained. The victim had jumped out of the window. The attack therefore ended, which did not soften the court.
Return to Amiens on July 29. The court tried a 26-year-old specialist educator, who admitted having accepted 5,000 euros to participate in the operation. On June 5, three hooded and armed men surprised a resident of Ételfay in her courtyard. Target identified, in all likelihood, via data leaks which affected the sector. However, the sponsors have still not been identified.
There remains the separate case of Simon Arthuis, a 19-year-old student killed in 2021 for 200,000 euros in cryptos: 30 years for the mastermind, 25 for his two accomplices, and five years confirmed on appeal for the twin brother in January 2026. A crime from before the wave, judged four years after the facts.
Three families emerge from these five decisions. First the aborted attacks, judged in correctional courts in Paris, Limoges and Amiens, where the sentences range from ten months to ten years depending on the violence used.
Then a successful kidnapping but without ransom, that of Revelles, which earned its main perpetrator nine years.
Finally a crime from before the wave, the murder of Simon Arthuis, the only case where an instigator was convicted.
In all cases, it is the performers who appear. The gendarmerie describes sponsors “generally based abroad” who recruit young “little hands” on Snapchat and Telegram for a few hundred or thousand euros. Among them, 16% are minors and 70% are 18-29 years old.
Crypto-kidnappings with ransom still not judged
Let us clarify what this table does not contain: to our knowledge, no kidnapping with ransom paid in crypto has yet been judged. Thus, the father of the streamer TeufeurS, released in August 2023 for around 1.7 million euros, is still awaiting a criminal trial, like the victim of Élancourt. In other words, the five sentences handed down punish the perpetrators, often for aborted attacks. The files where the money actually circulated are waiting their turn.
The only sponsor convicted was in Tangier
Here is the hole in the picture: apart from the Arthuis affair, an isolated crime before the wave, not a principal in the box. The only alleged mastermind of the wave convicted to date is Badiss Mohammed Bajjou, a 25-year-old Franco-Moroccan. Several kidnappings are attributed to him, all in the conditional. He would first be behind the sequestration of Élancourt, in Yvelines, in July 2023, a case at the origin of the international arrest warrants. Then there is the kidnapping of TeufeurS’ father in Cures, in Sarthe. The Le Mans public prosecutor's office names as the alleged sponsor a certain Badiss B., arrested in Tangier in June 2025. There is little room for doubt. The Moroccan media also link it to the kidnapping of David Balland in January 2025, then to that of the father of a crypto entrepreneur, who also had a finger amputated, in May 2025. On the French side, none of these cases has yet been judged.
Targeted by an Interpol red notice, he was arrested in Tangier in June 2025, in possession of bladed weapons and around ten telephones. Morocco does not extradite its nationals. The Tangier Court of Appeal therefore judged him itself and imposed 25 years of imprisonment on him at the end of May 2026. Among the charges included kidnapping, sequestration with torture and demand for ransom. The Moroccan reports do not specify which French files were retained. He denies everything.
The real problem is delays
For all the pending files, the crux lies in the traffic jam in the criminal courts. According to the government, nearly 6,000 criminal cases were awaiting trial in 2026, compared to less than 2,400 at the start of 2019. The stock has therefore more than doubled in seven years, and an organized gang kidnapping with torture is under investigation.
It all comes down to three figures: 88 indictments, five judgments, zero sponsors of the wave convicted in France. Because a kidnapper who directs from Tangier or from a French cell cares less about the penal code than about hearing deadlines.
The clock is ticking for Pnaco. Article 145-2 of the Code of Criminal Procedure caps pre-trial detention at four years for a crime committed by an organized gang, extendable twice to four months in exceptional cases. For the kidnappers of David Balland, indicted in January 2025, the basic ceiling therefore falls in January 2029, September at the latest with extensions, unless referred to the assizes in the meantime. Until then, each botched indictment will offer their lawyers a way out.
A climate that is getting worse
These delays fuel the climate on And yesterday’s news gave food for thought to those who were most upset. A man indicted for kidnapping, released due to a procedural flaw, shot dead in his car before any trial: the settling of scores preceded the court. Some go so far as to rejoice about it. But when the street delivers justice before the judges, it is no longer Mexicanization that we fear. It’s the Wild West that’s already here.
