Criminals threaten to poison goods in Lenta stores in case of non-payment of $ 500,000 in BTC

A video was received by email to the call center of the Lenta chain of stores with a threat of poisoning goods in hypermarkets if the company does not pay extortioners $ 500,000 in BTC.

After receiving a video of the threats, the administration of the Lenta retail network contacted the police, which opened a criminal case under article 207 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (a deliberately false report about an act of terrorism at a social infrastructure facility).

“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, ”the company’s press service said.

It is reported that the threatening video came to the email address of the company’s call center earlier this week. As Lenta reported to RIA Novosti, it is quite problematic to check whether the criminals brought their threats into action, as the distribution network has more than 3,500 suppliers and 380 hypermarkets throughout Russia.

Requiring buybacks from companies in BTC is a fairly common practice. However, it seems that this strategy has begun to fail. Back in December 2017, it was reported that no one wants to pay a ransom in bitcoins to unlock computers. Apparently, this led to the fact that the criminals began to act more decisively.