suspects

According to Cointelegraph, the Attorney General's Office of the State of Mexico (FGJEM) reported that two suspects, Diego Sebastián and Gerardo, were arrested for allegedly murdering Jonathan Meléndez, the keyboardist of the rock band Camilo Séptimo, along with his pregnant wife, daughter, and an employee. The family's golden retriever was also killed.The suspects are accused of committing the crime to obtain a cold wallet that allegedly contained millions of dollars in Bitcoin, with one of the suspects being a business partner of the victim, using that relationship to gain access to the victim's home. The two will appear in court on Wednesday, where the judge will decide if there is enough evidence to continue the criminal proceedings. If convicted, each suspect could face a prison sentence of 25 to 70 years corresponding to each victim.Such violent robberies targeting cryptocurrency holders (known as "ransom attacks") are on the rise. According to CertiK data, there were 52 reported ransom attack incidents globally in the first half of 2026, a year-on-year increase of 33.3%; among them, there were 20 home invasions targeting cryptocurrency holders, compared to only 1 during the same period last year.Chainalysis estimates that in the first half of 2026, criminals stole over 30 million dollars in cryptocurrency through ransom attacks. In 2025, global ransom attack incidents increased by 75% to 72 cases, with France leading with 19 cases, accounting for about 40% of the total attacks in Europe.

According to actu, a couple in the Landes department of France was invaded, taken hostage, and kidnapped by assailants in their home. The assailants targeted the Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies they held. Around 4 a.m., several criminals entered the residence, threatening and pressuring the couple to hand over a large amount of crypto assets.The two were subsequently taken away: the man was later found in the town of Solférino, completely naked and with multiple cuts on his body. The woman was found in another vehicle, in a different province at a considerable distance. After the incident, the French gendarmerie quickly blocked the roads and launched an investigation. Two men have already been arrested. The case is being handled by the Bordeaux Interregional Specialized Court (JIRS) and the National Prosecutor's Office for Organized Crime (PNACO).

According to a report by the Korea United News Agency, the Gwangju Police Agency's Cyber Crime Investigation Team will arrest and transfer three suspects led by A (in their 60s), who are suspected of establishing offices in Seoul, Gwangju in South Jeolla Province, and Gunsan in North Jeolla Province since November 2024. They allegedly deceived over 100 elderly individuals aged 70 to 80 into investing in virtual assets with false promises such as "guaranteed principal" and "potential profits of hundreds of billions of Korean won," accumulating approximately 500 million Korean won in fraud.The police stated that there are likely still unreported victims and are continuing to expand the investigation, reminding the public to remain vigilant against investment offers that promise guaranteed principal and high returns.

According to a report by Kyodo News, the Osaka Prefectural Police arrested three men on suspicion of violating the Organized Crime Punishment Law for laundering criminal proceeds on behalf of an investment fraud gang. It is said that these three individuals exchanged approximately 14 million yen from 10 victims across six prefectures into stablecoins and other cryptocurrency assets to conceal the source of the funds.According to the Osaka Prefectural Police, these three individuals belong to "over-the-counter traders" who conduct personal cryptocurrency transactions without using trading platforms and are believed to have participated in money laundering activities amounting to billions of yen.

According to The Block, the Criminal Investigation Department of the Seoul Police Agency in South Korea has arrested 23 suspects accused of laundering money for a Cambodian criminal organization, with the amount involved approximately 16.8 billion won (about 11.1 million USD). The gang transferred about 11.1 million USD in illegal funds by purchasing USDT and trading on domestic and international cryptocurrency exchanges from February 2024 to April 2025, using approximately 11,300 accounts for money laundering, involving about 265 cases of phishing and investment fraud, with the amount of illicit funds involved around 17 million USD. The Seoul police have seized approximately 650 million won (about 430,000 USD) in criminal proceeds from the suspects, but the gang leader is still at large and has been issued a red notice by Interpol.The police also arrested 33 individuals on the same charges for illegally providing currency exchange services to tourists and acquaintances through USDT.

According to the Times of India, the Gujarat police have arrested two suspects involved in cryptocurrency-related cybercrime, with the network allegedly trading over 226 million rupees. Investigators claim that the network is linked to terrorist financing, global drug trafficking, and dark web financial activities.Officials stated that this arrest is part of an ongoing investigation into the use of cryptocurrency channels for terrorist financing. Previously, 10 suspects had already been arrested during the investigation. The two latest suspects are accused of using the KYC information of a man named Sabbir Ali Sarani to create a Binance wallet and receiving 5,000 USDT through layered transactions.

According to Cointelegraph, Vanessa Perrée, the French national prosecutor for organized crime, stated that 88 people have been prosecuted for allegedly carrying out "ransom attacks" against cryptocurrency holders, including 10 minors, with 75 individuals in pre-trial detention, involving 12 cases currently being investigated by a Paris court judge. "Ransom attacks" refer to the use of violence through home invasions, kidnappings, and other means to gain access to the victims' cryptocurrency wallets.Perrée indicated that some suspects are involved in multiple cases, revealing the existence of a structured network, and the investigation is ongoing to identify all perpetrators and planners. Records from the French national office for organized crime show 18 such incidents in 2024, 67 in 2025, and 47 so far in 2026.

According to Cointelegraph, U.S. prosecutors have filed lawsuits against 10 foreign nationals associated with four cryptocurrency market makers. Three executives have been extradited from Singapore to the U.S. and appeared in federal court in Oakland, California, this Monday.The three defendants appearing in court are Gleb Gora, CEO of Vortex; Manu Singh, CEO of Contrarian; and Vasu Sharma, an employee of Contrarian. They were extradited to the U.S. after being arrested in Singapore in October 2025.The companies involved include Gotbit, Vortex, Antier, and Contrarian, with related activities dating back to 2018. The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) accuses these companies of creating false trading volumes through wash trading, matched orders, and prearranged trading, artificially inflating token prices, creating a false sense of liquidity, and attracting retail investors before insiders sold their holdings.

According to FinanceFeeds, the Central Bureau of Investigation of India has arrested suspect Sunil Nellathu Ramakrishnan (also known as Krish), who is suspected of being involved in a transnational human trafficking network related to Southeast Asian online fraud activities, and is identified as a key coordinator of the cross-border fraud network.This network lured Indian citizens to Thailand through fake recruitment and then transported them to scam hubs in Myanmar, Cambodia, and other places, forcing them to engage in activities such as cryptocurrency investment fraud and romance scams. Law enforcement agencies stated that such crimes utilize cryptocurrency assets for cross-border fund transfers, increasing the difficulty of tracking, and related investigations are still ongoing.

According to market news, the Vietnamese Ministry of Public Security has arrested several suspects related to the cryptocurrency platform ONUS, accusing them of issuing and promoting tokens such as VNDC, ONUS, and HNG through the Onus platform, manipulating supply and demand and prices through false advertising and coordinated trading, thereby illegally appropriating investors' funds.The police stated that the gang exercised highly concentrated control over the relevant token market, raising funds amounting to billions of dollars, but did not disclose specific losses. The named suspects include Vuong Le Vinh Nhan, related to ONUS Pro's Singapore parent company XPLOR, ONUS exchange technical administrator Tran Quang Chien, and Ngo Thi Thao, head of HanaGold Jewelry JSC. The Vietnamese police launched operations in multiple locations, summoning over 140 people and seizing relevant evidence. ONUS and its parent company Vemanti have not yet released detailed statements regarding the case.

According to Decrypt, the Central Bureau of Investigation in India has arrested Mumbai resident Sunil Nellathu Ramakrishnan, accusing him of being a key figure in a transnational trafficking network that lured multiple Indians to cryptocurrency scam parks in the Myawaddy region of Myanmar.The victims were transported from Delhi to Bangkok under the guise of legitimate work and then transferred to scam parks such as KK Park, where they were forced to engage in pig butchering scams and cryptocurrency investment fraud, and suffered illegal detention and physical abuse. The agency stated that intelligence provided by Indian victims who escaped from the parks and were repatriated last year led to the successful identification and arrest of Ramakrishnan. Interpol has classified the scam park network as a transnational criminal threat, affecting victims in over 60 countries. The United States has previously frozen over $580 million in related cryptocurrency assets, and one "pig butchering" organizer has been sentenced to 20 years in prison.

According to Cripto Noticias, a kidnapping incident aimed at stealing BTC and cryptocurrency private keys occurred recently in Madrid, Spain. A 33-year-old Canadian cryptocurrency entrepreneur was forcibly pushed into a rented van with altered license plates by several men. Witnesses immediately called the police, and the Spanish National Police intercepted the vehicle near Atocha Station, successfully rescuing the victim. Two Serbian suspects, aged 32 and 45, were arrested on the spot, while another suspect remains at large.According to police investigations, this kidnapping was a premeditated act. The victim had previously traveled from Barcelona to Madrid for financial business discussions and was suspected to have been tracked by the suspects beforehand. The suspects intended to use personal coercion to force the victim to hand over the mnemonic phrase and private keys of the cryptocurrency wallet, a method known in the security field as a "wrench attack." Police seized plastic zip ties and pills as tools used in the crime from the vehicle. Additionally, the suspects attempted to steal a luxury watch worth 100,000 euros from the victim. The victim was not seriously injured, and the case is still under investigation.This case is one of a series of personal attacks against cryptocurrency holders in Europe in 2026, with France recording 11 related cases this year.

According to the Jinan Daily, Li Weiwei, a female police officer from the Economic Investigation Unit of the Dezhou Public Security Bureau in Shandong Province, China, optimized her investigative methods by tracking the flow of funds transaction by transaction during the analysis of a telecom fraud case.After detailed analysis, Li Weiwei discovered a new type of criminal model that combines "traditional underground banks + virtual currency," which is more concealed and harder to trace. After several days of continuous effort, she ultimately identified 12 main criminal suspects, over 100 financial accounts, and 6 virtual currency wallet addresses. Together with the special investigation team, she created a clear organizational structure chart and a flow chart of the funds, legally freezing the assets involved in the case, successfully solving Dezhou's first underground bank case involving virtual currency.

According to DL News, the police in Lyon, France, have arrested 12 suspects allegedly involved in planning a cryptocurrency kidnapping case from last year. Previously, about 150 armed police officers raided a building near the Valence train station in the Drôme region on August 31, 2025, rescuing a 22-year-old Swiss man who had been kidnapped for four days. The kidnappers demanded a ransom in cryptocurrency, and the victim suffered severe abuse and injury during his captivity.The police stated that these arrests are the result of months of investigation, and approximately 20 individuals have been identified and implicated. On the day of the operation, one mastermind and two others were arrested, and in early September, 7 more were apprehended, including 6 individuals aged between 24 and 30, and 1 minor under 18. The prosecution has charged these individuals with kidnapping, illegal detention, organized crime, extortion, illegal possession of weapons, and conspiracy.On March 2, the police launched another large-scale operation, arresting 18 people, of whom 3 were detained. Additionally, the Versailles police are pursuing 3 suspects who impersonated police officers to rob a couple of $1 million worth of Bitcoin at knife point. From 2023 to the end of 2025, the French police have handled a total of 40 cryptocurrency-related kidnapping cases.

The South Korean police are investigating a series of revenge attack cases funded by cryptocurrency. Suspects accept payments of $300-600 in cryptocurrency from anonymous employers via Telegram to vandalize and defame target residences.In a recent case in Hwaseong City, a suspect in his 20s, Lim, spray-painted the victim's front door with red paint, scattered food waste, and smeared human excrement in the stairwell. South Korean police believe that a group claiming to be a private revenge organization is active on Korean Telegram channels. A similar phenomenon has been observed in Russia, where intermediaries offer customized revenge services through cryptocurrency and Telegram, charging up to $1,500, primarily using Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies for transactions to maintain anonymity.

According to Cointelegraph, South Korean police have arrested two suspects in a case involving the theft of 22 bitcoins (worth approximately $1.4 million). These bitcoins were originally seized by the police in November 2021 from a hacking incident at an exchange, but the police violated regulations by storing them in a cold wallet controlled by a third party, and the police themselves did not possess the wallet's mnemonic phrase.It was reported that the wallet's mnemonic phrase was later given to a person named "Mr. Jeong" as part of a loan agreement. This case was discovered four years later during an audit of another case involving the disappearance of 320 bitcoins at the Gwangju District Prosecutor's Office nationwide.

According to The Block, the Gyeonggi North Provincial Police Agency in South Korea arrested two suspects in 2026 who are accused of stealing 22 bitcoins from the evidence storage of the Gangnam Police Station. This batch of bitcoins was originally seized in 2021 during the investigation of the "A Coin Foundation" hacking case.According to the investigation, the police had not stored the assets in an officially regulated hardware wallet at the time, but instead used a cold wallet provided by the foundation, which allowed the suspects to illegally transfer the assets using the mnemonic phrase through information communication networks.Currently, this batch of bitcoins, valued at approximately $1.5 million, has not been recovered. Additionally, the former officer responsible for the case at that time was sentenced to 18 months in prison in 2024 for accepting bribes from the foundation.

According to reports from Zhong'an Online, the Hefei Xinzhan Public Security Bureau discovered that a virtual currency exchanger was providing money laundering services for a fraud gang while handling a telecom network fraud case involving 260,000 yuan. On January 15, 2026, the police arrested the suspect Liu in Sichuan.Investigation revealed that Liu had been engaged in virtual currency trading since 2020, contacting upstream buyers through overseas chat software and conducting transactions with fraudsters on illegal trading platforms. In June 2025, after selling virtual currency on an illegal platform, Liu withdrew the illicit funds that were transferred to his account to his personal WeChat account, which is suspected of concealing and disguising criminal proceeds. The case is currently under further investigation.

French police have arrested six suspects in connection with the kidnapping of a judge and her mother. According to Agence France-Presse, the 35-year-old judge and her 67-year-old mother were kidnapped overnight from Wednesday to Thursday last week and were later found injured and trapped in a garage in the Drôme region.Prosecutor Thierry Dran stated that the kidnappers sent photos and messages to the judge's partner, threatening to maim the victims if the ransom in cryptocurrency was not paid. The victims ultimately escaped with the intervention of a neighbor, without any ransom being paid. CertiK reported that such cryptocurrency ransomware attacks are evolving into organized crime, with 72 cases globally in 2025, resulting in total losses of $41 million. Currently, six suspects have been detained, including a minor, and the case is still under further investigation.

According to India Today, the Indian Enforcement Directorate has arrested two individuals related to the BitConnect cryptocurrency scam, which involves global fraud, kidnapping, and extortion, with amounts reaching thousands of bitcoins and tens of millions of rupees in cash.The arrested individuals, Nikunj Pravinbhai Bhatt and Sanjay Kotadia, are suspected of being involved in a kidnapping and extortion case, where the victim was forced to hand over 2,254 bitcoins, 11,000 litecoins, and approximately 1.45 billion rupees in cash. Some of the extorted bitcoins were converted into ETH and USDT and transferred through multiple wallets. The Indian Enforcement Directorate has frozen and seized assets worth approximately 1.9 billion rupees, including cryptocurrency assets, stocks, and cash; to date, the total value of seized or frozen assets in this case is around 21.7 billion rupees. The investigation is still ongoing. The Indian Enforcement Directorate stated that BitConnect presented itself as a high-return investment platform, claiming that its self-developed volatility trading robot could generate returns of up to 40% per month. The agency indicated that these claims are entirely fictitious, aimed at creating a false illusion of growth, including posting about a 1% fictitious daily return rate on its website.