This is the terrifying moment a crypto currency executive’s daughter and her family fell victim to an attempted abduction in central Paris.
The unnamed woman, 34, her husband and her two-year-old child were attacked by three masked men who tried to bundle her into a delivery van at 8.20am today.
In video filmed from a nearby flat, she can be heard screaming ‘let me go, let me go’
One of the witnesses said they also heard her husband shouting ‘help, she’s pregnant’.
At one point, the woman managed to grab hold of one of her attacker’s guns and threw it down the street where a passerby picked it up.
Another man emerged from a nearby café with a fire extinguisher that he threw at the van as it drove off.
Jean-Jacques, 61, saw what happened. He said: ‘I heard screaming so I went outside. I saw hooded and armed men running away and I turned my head and saw a man with a bloody head, he was lying on the ground. There was blood everywhere.’
A specialist police team has been assigned to look into the attempted kidnapping – the third of its kind against people linked to the cryptocurrency industry in France this year.
On May 1, a crypto entrepreneur’s father had his finger chopped off during a 48-hour ordeal in a building in Paris after being bundled into a delivery van. They wanted between £4 million and £6 million.
Footage of the amputation was sent to his son along with a demand for £4-£6 million. He was saved by police before five people were arrested.
In January, David Balland, co-founder of Ledger, and his wife were kidnapped from their home in the Cher region, around 150 miles south of Paris.
One of his fingers was chopped off by his kidnappers who wanted an £8.4 million ransom.
Meanwhile on May 1, the father of a crypto entrepreneur was abducted and forced into a delivery van in broad daylight.
The kidnappers, who also cut off one of their victim’s fingers, demanded a ransom of €5-7million (£4.2-£5.9million).
The victim was rescued in a police raid the next day, and five suspects have been arrested.
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