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Dean Skurka — the president and CEO of Canadian cryptocurrency firm WonderFi — was allegedly kidnapped and released after ransom payment.
According to a recent Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) report, Skurka was kidnapped in Toronto just before 6 p.m. The suspected kidnappers forced the victim into a vehicle and demanded money, according to the purported victim.
The ransom payment
While cryptocurrency use was not mentioned, CBC reports that the ransom was “paid electronically.” It is a mostly safe assumption that this means that the payment was requested to be in cryptocurrency since banks and law enforcement would be able to freeze and reverse electronic fiat money transfers.
After a one million Canadian dollars — just under $719,000 — ransom was paid, Skurka was found in Centennial Park in Etobicoke with no injury. He told CBC that while he was involved in the incident on Wednesday he is now safe. He wrote in an email:
“The safety and security of all of WonderFi’s employees are paramount. […] Client funds and data remain safe, and were not impacted by this incident.”
Jameson Lopp — the co-founder and chief security officer of Bitcoin (BTC) storage solution Casa Hodl — told CBC that this is far from the first such case. He said that this abduction is the 171st instance of suspects using physical violence to steal cryptocurrency. He continued:
“As the price goes up, more awareness of the space permeates throughout society and as a result, more criminally minded people decide they want to try to figure out what the ROI of executing a physical attack against a known crypto holder is.”
WonderFi is a company that develops and invests in decentralized products and protocols that are compatible with the Ethereum (ETH) virtual machine (EVM). The EVM is the engine that runs the smart contracts that allow for most of the recent decentralized finance (DeFi) and web3 innovations.
