Crypto Worker’s Children Held Hostage in Latest French ‘Wrench Attack,’ $46,000 Taken

Four men broke into a family home in the northern French town of Vendin-le-Vieil in the early hours of Sunday, held a couple and their two children, and forced the father to transfer €40,000 in crypto, BFMTV reported.

The four were hooded, according to the Béthune prosecutor’s office, and entered at around 4a. They bound the family with black tape and stayed more than three hours, a police source told France Télévisions.

The children are eight and twelve. The father, 40, works as a salaried IT specialist in the digital currency sector, according to the Béthune prosecutor’s office, which has opened an investigation into unlawful detention and extortion.

The men searched the house, then separated the father and assaulted him, making him “communicate his identification information and codes,” a police source told France Télévisions. His twelve-year-old daughter was struck in the face with car keys, according to a source close to the investigation. They left with about €40,000 ($46,000), driving away before the family worked itself free. Firefighters reached the house at 7am.

The victims, described by prosecutors as in a state of shock, were referred for forensic medical examination, and a victim support association has been assigned to them. The case has been opened as kidnapping and extortion by an organized gang, and handed to regional judicial police alongside France’s anti-cybercrime office. All four suspects remain at large.

Wrench attacks in France

Wrench attacks in France have tended to target those with visible fortunes, including the father of a crypto millionaire whose finger was severed, the wife of a Sandbox co-founder, the chief executive of Binance France. This case differs in that the  victim was a salaried IT specialist, and the sum taken was in the low tens of thousands.

France has become the worst-affected country in the world for these attacks. The national anti-organised crime prosecutor’s office has recorded more than 70 kidnappings and unlawful detentions linked to crypto in the first eight months of 2026, and authorities charged 88 people, some of them minors, in a crackdown earlier this year.

On a global scale, Chainalysis counted $30 million taken in wrench attacks during 2026, while CertiK put losses at $124 million across six months, a twelvefold rise.