Millionaire crypto boss rescued from kidnappers – but not in time to save his finger

A millionaire crypto boss has been rescued from kidnappers by French special forces – but they arrived too late to stop the captors chopping off his finger.

David Balland, 36, and his wife, Amandine, were abducted from their home in Vierzon, central France, in the early hours of Tuesday morning and driven to two separate locations as the kidnappers demanded a reported $10 million (£8 million) ransom be paid.

The GIGN, a French elite police tactical unit specialising in hostage situations, formed part of a 230-person force sent to find the couple as a news blackout was put in place around the fast-moving situation. When they finally swooped on a remote house some 65 kilometres away, near Châteauroux, they found Mr Balland bloodied and bruised, and missing a digit.

They arrested nine men and a woman aged between 20 and 40. Police are hunting for further potential accomplices.

Mr Balland is the co-founder of French crypto company Ledger, a world leader in digital wallets and vaults to safeguard crypto assets. The company is valued at over €1.3 billion (£1.1 billion) and is one of France’s top 15 “unicorns” – privately held startups worth more than $1 billion (£800 million). His net worth is thought to be in the millions.

A severed digit – then a frantic search

On Tuesday, armed criminals burst into the home of Mr Balland, a boyish techno geek whose ex-colleagues say lives a discreet life and is “not motivated by money”. Located behind pine trees in a development outside Vierzon, his house is situated in 3,000 square metres of grounds and includes a swimming pool and an American SUV.

Laure Beccuau, the Paris prosecutor, told reporters that the couple were then driven to another address, where the kidnappers “beat up” Mr Balland and cut off part of one of his fingers and sent it to a business associate.

According to a source close to the case, the “associate” was Éric Larchevêque, a co-founder of Ledger, who alerted police to the kidnapping after receiving a video showing Mr Balland’s severed digit, and a “large” ransom demand to be paid in cryptocurrency.

Le Parisien, a French media outlet, put the figure at $10 million (£8 million), which was ordered to be sent to a digital wallet. Part of the sum was handed over during negotiations handled by police, but most of the crypto assets were seized and frozen, said the prosecutor.

Due to the sensitive nature of the case, national media were asked to respect a news blackout while the frantic search for the couple continued, even as rumours began to circulate about an unusual security deployment in Vierzon and in the nearby town of Méreau.

Speculation was already swirling online that kidnappers had seized Mr Larchevêque, who regularly appears on the television show Qui veut être mon associé? (Who wants to be my associate?), the French equivalent of Dragons’ Den.

Mr Larchevêque was placed in France’s Fortune 500 of wealthy individuals by Challenges magazine, with an estimated net worth of €300 million (£250 million).

However, local media then revealed it was Mr Balland who was being held.

The case was handed to a specialised inter-regional court in Paris and an investigation was opened into “kidnapping and sequestration in an organised gang to obtain the execution of a demand”, a crime punishable by life imprisonment.

‘We had to move very quickly’

Police and gendarmes, including the GIGN, worked with cryptocurrency experts during the operation.

They were able to track the GPS of one of the hostage takers’ cars and sifted through accommodation potentially rented by the kidnap team on the booking.com and Airbnb websites. Several houses were searched.

On Wednesday afternoon, they made their first arrest in the Bourges area. GIGN agents then swooped on the house near Châteauroux – an isolated rented residence – and found Mr Balland alive but injured.

The businessman was treated by the emergency services and hospitalised for a “mutilated hand”. Two suspects were arrested during the operation. Another was arrested a few hours later. One of the suspects is a known drug dealer from Marseille, a notorious hub for the drug trade.

Mr Balland’s wife, Amandine, remained missing and magistrates and gendarmes reportedly feared that the panic-stricken kidnappers may have decided to “dispose” of their last hostage as the prospect of financial gain receded.

“There was real stress,” an investigative source told Le Parisien. “We knew we had to move very quickly, and we had the feeling we had a team capable of going AWOL.”

As the hours passed, the investigators were given a clear indication that Mr Balland’s partner was being held in the Étampes area, in Essonne. Late on Wednesday, the GIGN finally launched a rescue operation.

The businessman’s wife was discovered bound but unharmed in the back of a van in a car park near the town centre.

Who are the suspects?

Six more suspects from the Paris region, notably Seine-Saint-Denis and Essonne, were arrested at the same time.

“They have profiles of [drug dealing] jobbers from housing estates,” an investigative source was cited as saying.

According to Le Parisien, police became swiftly convinced the kidnapping had been carried out by teams of young criminals, apparently well prepared but recruited and “remote-controlled” by unknown masterminds.

The prosecutor declined to be drawn on whether foreign-based individuals were behind the kidnapping, saying that police were seeking to “identify everybody involved”.

Pascal Gauthier, the chief executive of Ledger, said he was “deeply relieved that David and his wife have been freed and are now in safety”.

Shockwaves in the crypto world

Founded in 2014, Ledger is one of the top crypto companies in France. It sells “hardware wallets”, physical devices for storing crypto assets. Mr Balland is one of eight co-founders, the company’s website says.

Such so-called offline “cold wallets” have become increasingly popular in the wake of the collapse of crypto exchanges that keep cryptocurrency for their customers – notably FTX, which saw founder Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison for fraud in 2024.

“When you buy a gold bar, you don’t leave it lying around on your mantelpiece ledge, you keep it safe. With cryptocurrencies, it’s the same thing,” Mr Larchevêque once explained.

The case has sent shockwaves through the crypto world and came on the day US president Donald Trump said he intended to make America the “world capital of artificial intelligence and crypto” at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Bitcoin – the world’s best-known and biggest cryptocurrency by market capitalisation and often dubbed “digital gold” – hit record highs last weekend at $109,000 (£87,000) ahead of Mr Trump’s inauguration.

Prosecutors said they were not linking the kidnapping to a case earlier this month when a 56-year-old man, reported to be the father of a cryptocurrency influencer based in Dubai, was found in the boot of a car.

A ransom demand was made for the man, whose son is known for posting videos about his crypto profits online, media reported.

Cryptocurrencies are digital units, designed and managed through a decentralised system of computer networks without the intervention of any central authority, unlike traditional currencies which are usually run by central banks.