Recently, the chain of hypermarkets Lenta, in Russia, the second largest in the country, received a video via email requesting a ransom in bitcoin, or otherwise, they will poison food products.
The ransom requested amounts to $500,000 in bitcoin (BTC). As reported by a local site, the administrators of Lenta, after receiving the video, immediately contacted the police:
“We received a video footage with threats from unknown individuals who demanded a certain amount of money from us, threatening to poison the goods. Now we have contacted the police”.
In more detail, the video was sent using an email address from the call centre of the same company at the beginning of the week, thus suggesting that it may be a person internal to the company or that he/she have access to data of that calibre.
Moreover, it is difficult to understand whether criminals are bluffing or not, given that Lenta’s distribution network has more than 3500 suppliers and 380 hypermarkets.
The Minister of Internal Affairs has also been notified about this bitcoin ransom and through their press office they have communicated the following:
“Representatives of a commercial company contacted the police, who reported that they received a message about possible illegal actions in relation to their organization. A criminal case has been opened on this statement, an investigation is underway.”
Some time ago similar cases occurred in Baltimore and Florida where entire administrative offices had computers blocked by hackers who also demanded a ransom in bitcoin.
