The high-tech kidnap-for-ransom standoff in Ukraine involving a Bitcoin expert has finally reached a peaceful resolution, as the kidnapee has finally been released, though not after his $1 million ransom was paid off.
It also seems that finding the perpetrators will be a lot more difficult since the ransom money they demanded was not the usual traceable cash but $1 million worth of the Bitcoin cryptocurrency. Pavel Lerner, an executive at cryptocurrency exchange Exmo in Ukraine, has finally been freed two days after he was kidnapped on Thursday, Dec. 28, 2017. It was also not clear who paid off his ransom online; he also did not admit whether he did the transfer himself or not.
Lerner was snatched by an armed gang wearing ski-masks and have targeted him specifically due to his high profile as an authority in Bitcoin.
This was marked as the first incident of robbery involving cryptocurrencies in Ukraine and more are expected due to the increasing price of Bitcoin right now. Authorities have assumed that the kidnappers have already moved are cashed in their Bitcoins since not doing so will be unwise due to the price fluctuations; this only made them harder to trace.
Meanwhile, Exmo, Lerner's company, has assured its users that their Bitcoins are safe and no user accounts or wallets were tapped when paying off the ransom for him. The kidnappers certainly did not seem tech-savvy enough to hack into Bitcoin wallets, and Lerner also did not have access to any of them, meaning it was either him or his company who paid the ransom.
With the increasing surge in the price of Bitcoin over the coming months, more cryptocurrency-related attacks are bound to happen and are certainly being expected by authorities. The price of Bitcoin has seen a recent upsurge from $900 per coin to a staggering $14,000, which is a 1,555 percent increase. This has made large-scale Bitcoin exchange firms prime targets for robberies as well as stakeouts.
