Two foreigners kidnapped, set free after paying bitcoin ransom in Lahore

LAHORE: Two foreign nationals, one from Switzerland and the other from Germany were deprived of millions of rupees in Lahore, the provincial capital of Punjab, ARY News reported.

According to a first information report (FIR), registered on the complaint of an Islamabad resident, the man identified as Irfan Mahmood invited the foreigners, a Swiss man and a German woman, to Lahore.

According to the police report, the accused along with his accomplices took the foreign nationals from a hotel where they were staying after arrival in Lahore to an undisclosed location with their eyes covered with a piece of cloth.

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The police said that one accused sprinkle heroin powder on the clothes of Stephan Ehrhardt, a German foreigner and threatened of lodging a drug case against them.

The accused then blackmailed them into transferring 6,300 euros and 1.86 Bitcoin worth Rs14,700,00 into his account. As per FIR, the accused with help of a fake press team also recorded a video of foreigners and blackmailed them of transferring Rs300million more into their account.

Irfan Mehmood had met with both the foreigners in their respective countries.

It is pertinent to mention here that the world’s biggest digital currency bitcoin, which has a market capitalisation of over $900 billion, hit a record $51,721 price on Wednesday.