South Africa: gang abducts 13-year-old boy, demands ransom of 15 bitcoins
The kidnappers of a 13-year-old boy in South Africa have demanded a ransom of 15 bitcoins (BTCs) - about US$ 120,000 - for his release, The Guardian reported on Tuesday, 22 May.
Local police said that on Sunday, May 20, three gang members stopped at a car near where the teenager, Kathlego Marite, was playing with two friends near his home in the city of Witbank.
Witnesses said the men dragged him into the vehicle, leaving the ransom note at the scene. The'non-negotiable' note is reported to threaten to kill the child if claims are not met, with the first deadline for payment being Monday.
The local media quoted Brigadier Leonard Hlathi as saying that the family is "going through a trauma":
"They don't even know what this Bitcoin is. They're devastated and you can see they're worried and they're asking themselves, "Where's our son?"
The Guardian reports that the case is the first cryptocurrency ransom demand in the country's history.
Late last year, Pavel Lerner, the managing director of the EXMO exchange, was released after a ransom of US$ 1 million was paid in Bitcoin to a gang that had kidnapped him while he was leaving his office in Kiev, Ukraine..
That same month, the author of a parcel bomb attack in Germany sent a note via DHL requesting a ransom of 10 million euros in Bitcoin.
Bitcoin has also reportedly been an increasingly popular form of cyber-crime rescue, with widespread fears that the famous WannaCry ransomware would cause companies around the world to pre-emptively hoard cryptocurrency last year.