Speaking of bitcoin and criminals, the digital currency is not only favored by the hackers and cyber criminals but by bombers also. Even though many supermarkets do not accept bitcoin, the Jumbo supermarket chain in Netherlands has got a bomber demanding a lot of bitcoins.
According to the available information, an unidentified person has been planting explosives in Jumbo supermarket chain. Even though this has been happening since May 2015, the Dutch law enforcement agencies have made the information public only in the recent days.
The first incident occurred in supposed to have occurred in May 2015, where the perpetrator had left explosives in a bucket in one of the Jumbo supermarket branches in Groningen. The explosives were luckily discovered by one of the members of public and it was successfully diffused by the law enforcement agencies.
It was repeated again three weeks after the first incident. But this time, the explosives went off causing damage to a window and a door. The camera footage from the venue wasn’t of much help as the perpetrator was not identifiable in the videos.
Since then there has been a couple of threatening letters, one sent on June 5 with the demand for an undisclosed amount of bitcoins. The perpetrator had mentioned that he is not going to stop until his demand was met.
On June 6, an anonymous caller warned the police about an explosive device planted in the same supermarket. The call turned out to be a hoax after the search didn’t yield explosives of any kind. Again last month on July 1, a birthday card with explosive powder was sent to the supermarket along with a threatening note. While there have been no causalities yet, the police have not turned up with any leads regarding the perpetrator.
It is possible that someone is playing a dangerous prank to make some easy money. The fact that bitcoin transactions are hard to trace, makes it one of the preferred currency for criminals. What many people don’t realize is that bitcoin transactions are not anonymous but pseudonymous and transactions can be traced.