Chinese businessmen kidnapped for crypto ransom – a disturbing trend – BitcoinBlog.de – das Blog für Bitcoin und andere virtuelle Währungen

Recently, there have been increasing reports of Chinese businesspeople being kidnapped while traveling abroad – with ransom demanded in Bitcoin or Tether. This trend isn’t new but seems to be on the rise.

It’s better not to talk about crypto, and not to show that you have money, especially if you are Chinese and currently traveling abroad. Some Chinese have recently experienced this firsthand, and not everyone came through unscathed.

A 35-year-old Chinese businessman had a narrow escape. He was traveling in Thailand with his wife when four other Chinese broke into his luxury house at night, armed with firearms and knives. They tied up the couple and forced him to transfer cryptocurrencies worth two million dollars. The businessman later told the police that he did not know the robbers and had no idea how they had figured out where he was staying. According to the police, the robbery was well-planned and meticulously executed. The robbers remain at large.

While the businessman apparently already had a substantial amount of cryptocurrencies on his smartphone—and was very likely robbed for this exact reason—it’s unclear whether another victim had anything to do with cryptocurrencies at all. As reported recently by Caixin magazine , a Chinese man was kidnapped during a trip to Malaysia. He was on his way to the airport with a local woman when the kidnappers intercepted them. He and the woman were held for five days. After the man’s family paid a ransom of 1.2 million dollars in virtual currencies, the two were released.

This story also ended well for the victim—and badly for the kidnappers. The police investigated, discovered the driver of the kidnappers was the mastermind, identified 18 participants, many of whom were already known to the police, and cracked down hard. A gunfight ensued, during which some of the kidnappers were shot.

With just a little research, one can find numerous similar cases. In April, the press reported on a wealthy Chinese businessman who had residences in England and Singapore. While playing a round of golf and heading to the seventh hole, he was struck down and kidnapped by unknown assailants. He was beaten, tied up, and locked in a cage. The kidnappers demanded 15 million dollars in Bitcoin, but the businessman apparently managed to escape. The newspaper article is somewhat unclear at this point.

Two other Chinese businessmen were less fortunate. They traveled to the Philippines to attend a business meeting. It’s not known exactly what happened, but their families received a message demanding two million dollars each in USDT to see their loved ones again. The families traveled to the Philippines themselves to negotiate with the kidnappers and apparently paid around 100,000 USDT. But the two men were not released and were later found dead. A similar fate befell two other Chinese businessmen shortly before, who were also attending a business meeting in the Philippines.

Sometimes people known to hold cryptocurrencies are specifically targeted; sometimes, it’s simply businessmen being kidnapped, with cryptocurrencies used as the ransom. The trend is alarming either way. Bitcoin developer Jameson Lopp has been more or less meticulously documenting „physical attacks on Bitcoiners.“ His list begins in 2014; from 2018, the number of cases increases, and after a brief lull in 2019, it has remained consistently high since 2020, with 20 to 30 cases each year.

Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are now causing what has long been feared: They are making kidnapping great again. For a long time, the money transfer was the Achilles‘ heel of kidnapping. Transfers were naturally unusable, and even cash is numbered, making it traceable during the handover. Bitcoin and Tether are not anonymous—Tether can even be frozen—but they solve the immediate problems of transfers and cash for kidnappers. With anonymous cryptocurrencies like Monero (XMR), the kidnappers can also evade transaction traceability, as happened in the spectacular case of the kidnapping of Anne-Elisabeth Hagen in Norway.

Overall, however, the number of kidnappings involving cryptocurrencies is still moderate. One can only hope it stays that way.