A family living in Vern-sur-Seiche, a town of about 8,000 people south of Rennes in Ille-et-Vilaine, was assaulted and briefly held captive on 22 August 2026 after a group of intruders broke into their isolated house believing it belonged to someone else.
According to the Rennes public prosecutor, Frédéric Teillet, who confirmed the facts, the attackers had come looking for the actual homeowner, said to hold cryptocurrency assets, who was absent at the time. The occupants present in the house were sequestered and assaulted before the intruders realised they had targeted the wrong people. Once the error became apparent, the group fled without finding the man they were seeking.
Emergency services took charge of the victims after the attack. An investigation has since been opened and assigned to the Section de recherches de Rennes, which is working to establish how the group identified the property and what became of their intended target.
Part of a wider pattern
The Vern-sur-Seiche case is not isolated. Figures from the Parquet national anticriminalité organisée show that, as of 23 April 2026, 135 kidnappings or attempted kidnappings linked to digital assets had been recorded in France since 2023, a tally that underlines how frequently crypto holders and their households have become targets for organised gangs seeking access to wallets or funds.
A comparable incident took place on 20 April in Ploudalmézeau, north of Brest, where five members of a family were sequestered by attackers who had come looking for a man active in cryptocurrency. He too was absent when the group arrived, though in that case a digital wallet was reported stolen before the attackers left.
Taken together, the two cases in Brittany point to a recurring modus operandi: intruders targeting private homes tied to individuals believed to hold crypto assets, sometimes striking the wrong address or family in the process. For residents of otherwise quiet towns like Vern-sur-Seiche and Ploudalmézeau, the incidents mark an unsettling extension of crypto-related crime into ordinary domestic settings, far removed from exchanges or trading platforms.
The Section de recherches de Rennes has not disclosed further details on the number of individuals involved in the Vern-sur-Seiche attack or their whereabouts. The investigation continues.
