A French tax agent, recognized as Ghalia C. in French media reports, has been accused of accessing and promoting delicate data from inside French tax authority databases. Criminals are mentioned to have then used this knowledge in no less than one violent house assault on a jail officer and his spouse, stemming from a dispute over smuggled cell phones in a jail cell.
Ghalia additionally queried particulars on these recognized to be concerned with crypto who can be suspected of having substantial holdings of digital money, probably setting them up for “$5 wrench attacks” the place thieves use bodily pressure to pressure irreversible transfers of bitcoin, stablecoins, or different sorts of digital property. As well as to conventional crypto hacking and thefts over the web, such as a recent example where an Office Space-style exploit was used, bodily assaults on crypto customers, the place transfers are pressured underneath menace or use of violence, have gotten more and more frequent.
The tax agent in query not too long ago misplaced an enchantment and can stay in custody after a listening to at France’s appellate courtroom. She admitted offering the information however insisted she was unaware of the consumers’ plans. In an English translation from French studies, she said, “I gave details about this individual. I knew nothing of what was finished and I would really like to ask forgiveness from this couple who had been attacked.”
Prosecutors famous her refusal to unlock her cellphone or identify her sponsor, arguing she abused her function to assist a repeat offender. Past crypto customers and the jail guard who was the sufferer of a house invasion, Ghalia allegedly offered particulars on well being inspectors, a choose, and billionaire Vincent Bolloré.
2025 marked an all-time record in terms of physical crypto thefts, and a considerable quantity of these assaults have occurred in France. For instance, there was the abduction of David Balland, who’s a co-founder of crypto {hardware} pockets producer Ledger, and his companion, who had been held for ransom tied to their crypto property. Moreover, kidnappers targeted the daddy of a distinguished crypto entrepreneur and went so far as to sever a finger in a ransom scheme, however police intervened and rescued him.
After all, these threats prolong past France, as seen in a San Francisco home invasion late last year the place an attacker disguised as a supply driver entered a Mission Dolores residence in broad daylight, pulled a gun, duct-taped the sufferer, and coerced the switch of $11 million in crypto.
Whereas 2025 set information for crypto’s function in broader illicit flows, which blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis says reached $154 billion in transactions to illicit addresses, Ghalia took funds by way of conventional means by way of financial institution money deposits and Western Union transfers.
No studies immediately hyperlink Ghalia’s knowledge gross sales to one of the precise crypto thefts that happened in France final 12 months, however this case underscores how informal dealing with of private data clashes with the truth of irreversible funds of digital money. And this juxtaposition between crypto and private knowledge safety is more and more placed on show in additional circumstances, as additionally illustrated by the case of the data breach at a third-party payment processor used by Ledger reported earlier this week.
Crypto allows full monetary self-custody, but delicate knowledge stays susceptible in centralized databases and has not seen the same improve in direction of a extra decentralized infrastructure. Bitcoin advocates and cypherpunks have persistently flagged authorities and institutional private knowledge processing and storage mandates as main opsec dangers. Sadly, widespread knowledge mishandling might persist till extra breaches lead to a push for a brand new paradigm of individually-controlled knowledge as opposed to authorities and corporate-controlled honeypots.
