Swedish Criminals Targeting Bitcoin Users Amid Ease of Access to Personal Information

According to Cointelegraph, criminals in Sweden are targeting prominent local Bitcoin figures due to the ease of access to personal information and residential addresses in the country. Swedish media outlets LT and Aftonbladet have reported separate robberies in Rönninge and Södertälje, where victims were tied up and physically abused to steal their physical and virtual Bitcoin holdings. Eric Wall, a StarkNet Foundation board member and cryptocurrency proponent, highlighted the incidents in an X post (formerly Twitter), stating that the two assault cases indicate that Swedish criminals are actively targeting Bitcoin users. Wall noted that the purpose of the assaults was to steal the victims' Bitcoin holdings held in hardware wallets. He added that the first incident of criminals targeting Bitcoin users took place in 2022, when one of Sweden's most well-known Bitcoiners had their apartment broken into. Wall believes that criminals scour social media to identify and target Bitcoin or cryptocurrency users, with a common theme of the attacks being that they took place shortly after individuals had live-streamed podcasts focused on Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies or mentioned the subject in public. Wall also pointed out that Sweden's Offentlighetsprincipen (Principle of Public Access to Information) laws, which give the public the right to request information, including residential addresses and tax records from the government, are becoming a means for criminals to prey on ecosystem participants. He stated that he left the country due to these laws and that Sweden is probably one of the least safe countries to be active in the cryptocurrency sector. The Offentlighetsprincipen law also reportedly makes it easy for citizens to search for Swedish residents' addresses and scour their tax records, which is being abused by criminals to ascertain how much an individual has paid in income or capital gains tax and size them up as a result.