Suspects remain at large as French couple become crypto theft targets

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 one has been arrested. France has experienced a long run of violent attacks on suspected crypto holders this year.

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

An attack took place on Saturday in a residential area in the hills above Alès, Southern France. The intrusion started around five in the morning, when the couple was asleep.

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

The victims’ shouts alerted neighbors, who called officers from the Alès police station. The intruders unfortunately ran off and escaped when the police arrived, leaving the couple behind.

The case has been handed to the Organized and Specialized Crime Division (DCOS) in Nîmes, the former 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.

Notably, attackers have a pattern of going after people who have been flagged in advance using stolen data files and years of accumulated leaks.

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

About 80 similar assaults of unlawful detentions or extortions tied to crypto have been logged since January in the country. 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 to the 45 cases that were counted 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, about 63.5% of the global total, with Europe accounting for 39. Home invasions in its dataset jumped from a single case in the first half of 2025 to 20 a year later.

Data leaks are a big 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, complete with 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.

Prior to 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 hoping for millions. They reportedly left with 3,000 euros instead.

Even 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.