SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
France is tense after a string of kidnappings that targeted the families of cryptocurrency executives. Some of the country's wealthiest tech leaders are demanding protection from the government as they hire bodyguards and call for the right to carry weapons. Rebecca Rosman reports from Paris.
REBECCA ROSMAN: Filmed from an apartment window across the street, an attack in broad daylight.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Shouting in French).
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Speaking French).
ROSMAN: A young woman wrestles on the sidewalk with three men trying to pull her into a van parked on a Paris street. She pries a handgun from one of the attackers, throws it away. A passerby gets involved. The men give up.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Shouting in French).
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: (Shouting in French).
ROSMAN: She's the daughter of a cryptocurrency CEO.
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PIERRE NOIZAT: (Speaking French).
ROSMAN: Pierre Noizat heads Paymium, one of France's oldest crypto exchanges.
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NOIZAT: (Speaking French).
ROSMAN: "There's a kind of terror," he said on French television's BFM TV on Friday, adding that these kinds of attacks are driven by organized crime. The attack marked the third time this year that a crypto executive's family has been targeted in France. In January, a co-founder of a crypto firm was kidnapped, along with his wife, before police rescued him weeks later. His captors had cut off one of his fingers to try and get a ransom paid. Then, in April, the father of another crypto executive was abducted in Paris's 14th arrondissement and tortured. That makes three targeted kidnappings in just five months.
ANTOINE CHERON: (Speaking French).
ROSMAN: Antoine Cheron, a Paris-based lawyer, says those are just the kidnappings that have been made public. He represents several crypto entrepreneurs.
CHERON: (Speaking French).
ROSMAN: He says these are next-level criminals. They understand how crypto works and how to exploit it. They research their targets online, know what a crypto wallet is. And because they demand ransoms in cryptocurrency, payments are near impossible to trace.
ERIC LARCHEVEQUE: (Speaking French).
ROSMAN: Eric Larcheveque knows the problem firsthand. He co-founded Ledger, the crypto firm whose executive was kidnapped in January. In an interview with French broadcaster RTL, he said France has become a hot spot for these attacks, in part because of how easy it is to access personal information.
LARCHEVEQUE: (Speaking French).
ROSMAN: He says any entrepreneur in France is required to register their home address in a public company database, making it easier for criminals to find targets. Add to that, he says, a growing sense of impunity and criminal networks acting more and more violently.
LARCHEVEQUE: (Speaking French).
ROSMAN: Larcheveque says he now pays over $50,000 a month for private security for his own family. He has cameras and weapons at home. In a closed-door meeting on Friday with France's interior minister, he called for crypto executives to be allowed to carry firearms for protection. Larcheveque says that over the past year, there were 50 physical attacks around the world targeting people in crypto. Fourteen of those - nearly a third - happened in France.
Rebecca Rosman, NPR News, Paris.
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