
Wife of Norwegian billionare kidnapped, €9M crypto ransom - xlance
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/01/09/kidnappers-demand-9m-cryptocurrency-norwegian-billionaires-wife/
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blunte
If I were worth 120 million and my wife were ransomed for 9 mil, I'd pay the 9
ransom to get her back, and then I would put another 9 mil bounty on the heads
of the people who kidnapped her.

~~~
jessaustin
It's not clear that she lived past the day of the kidnapping. TFA indicates
there has been no proof of life.

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Kaveren
> "“Police have so far advised the family not to meet the requirements.”

This is good advice from their point of view because it lowers the incentive
to commit these types of crimes in the future.

For the individual person, it is most wise to pay the ransom and ignore what
law enforcement tells you if you want to see the person back.

~~~
mrguyorama
Yet at the same time, as an individual criminal there is no incentive to
actually return the person or even keep them alive once payment has been
recieved

~~~
brokenmachine
Of course there's an incentive to not kill them.

Most people don't actually enjoy murdering innocent people, and if the police
found the dead body then it's a murder investigation which would be taken more
seriously than a kidnapping/ransom.

All they'd need to do is blindfold the victim and drop them at a random
location. It'd be much less risk than disposing of a corpse.

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RcouF1uZ4gsC
When you develop a tool, you have to consider the pros and the cons. For
example, encrypted chat, while it may have bad uses, the vast majority of uses
are good or at least benign. With cryptocurrency on the other hand, it seems
like the bad uses are the majority: fraud, money laundering, illegal drugs,
and extortion. In the past, the money exchange in an extortion scheme was
always the weak point. Now, thanks to cryptocurrencies, it is the strong
point.

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iaw
Missing since October 31st, this is horrible.

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jessaustin
This is terrible. I wonder, what is the comment about the ransom note intended
to signify? That the kidnappers are not Norwegian? ISTM that extreme
confidence would be required to commit a crime of this nature in a foreign
country.

~~~
ancorevard
It signifies that either a foreigner or recent immigrant, or perhaps a
dyslectic or anyone who would like it to appear as if a foreigner or recent
immigrant or a dyslectic wrote the note.

~~~
trentlott
Yes, for native speaker would not happen that they change writing from normal
fluency. What gain can be from changing normal grammatics or to use left hand?

Verily the poorly-skilled can never write better, and the better never poorer.

But are there known 'kidnap ransomers' that could be deduced through language?
It seems unlikely, I guess, unless Norway has enough local variances that
would give a native speaker away through dialect.

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0898
This happened at Halloween but the police asked the media to not report it and
they seemingly complied.

Is this kind of arrangement unique to Norway?

~~~
toufiqbarhamov
No, a lot of media outlets will not report on something that will definitely
put someone’s life in immediate danger, unless the public interest outweighs
the risk. In this case the public interest is well served as long as it’s
eventually reported, and a scoop at the cost of a life would be pointless and
cruel. It doesn’t always work out of course, and the smaller a media org is
the less likely they are to abide by norms.

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flossball
Norway has public tax records. This is one of the potential flaws of an
otherwise, kinda cool openness. You can't be rich and have a 'normal' life.
You have money in Norway, you have to have walls, staff, etc. just to have a
bit of safety.

~~~
audunw
This seems completely out of touch with the reality in Norway.

In this case police suspect that he was targeted due to a public news story
about him making a lot of money on something or other a while back.

The public tax record don’t really play much into this. There are plenty of
other sources of information about who is wealthy or not. Usually for
burglary, you’re target based on the area you live in.

And all in all Norway is extremely safe.

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joaomacp
These kinds of things need to be considered when arguing about privacy: you
could argue that having completely private payments with no link possible to
the receiver is bad, because it facilitates this type of crime: Before crypto,
you had to either demand money to a bank account (traceable) or demand cash on
a certain location (which could then be surveiled by police to find the
criminals).

I'm not saying there are kidnappings because there is crypto, but maybe some
kidnappings are easier when cryptocurrencies exist, and that is definitely a
downside to consider vs the already low upsides of crypto.

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godson_drafty
For a billionaire, that is quite a humble home.

~~~
wil421
I am a multimillionaire in Indian Rupees but that doesn’t mean much in dollars
or euros.

Another poster pointed out they were worth $200 million or as the article said
about 147 million pounds.

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mehrdadn
How long will it be until people realize cryptocurrency is a problem?

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insertnickname
Yes, cryptocurrency is clearly to blame for kidnappings. It's not like we ever
had kidnappings before Bitcoin.

~~~
mehrdadn
Is that I said though? You think the existence of cryptocurrency plays no part
in facilitating ransom demands?

~~~
lostmsu
Yeah, so does existence of any spoken and/or written language. Without them,
you'd actually have to come to the person, and explain the demand with signs
like in a game of charades.

