Spanish police said Wednesday they have arrested five people accused of abducting and murdering a man to steal his crypto money while another four were charged in Denmark.

The man and his partner were attacked in April in southern Spain. The man was shot in the leg when he attempted to escape, police said in a statement.

The pair were then "taken to a house where they were held for several hours while the perpetrators tried to access their wallets in order to steal crypto assets."

The woman was freed at midnight and reported the abduction. Police later found her partner's body in a wooded area at Mijas in Malaga province.

Following house searches in Madrid and Malaga, police seized pistols and "numerous items related to the crime," including a pair of trousers marked with blood.

Police released video on social media showing officers raiding an unknown location, searching a vehicle and collecting evidence. Multiple handcuffed suspects can be seen being escorted by officers.

Spanish police did not specify when the arrests took place.

Of the four people charged in Denmark, two were already serving prison sentences for similar offences.

Kidnappings and attempted abductions in the crypto world have multiplied globally in line with the currency's rise.

In May, a man with a bitcoin fortune was allegedly tortured for weeks in his New York City home. The unidentified 28-year-old man managed to escape from his alleged captors on May 23 in the affluent SoHo neighborhood in Manhattan.

In January, kidnappers seized French crypto boss David Balland and his partner. Balland co-founded the crypto firm Ledger, valued at more than $1 billion at the time.

Balland's finger was cut off by his kidnappers, who had demanded a ransom. He was freed the next day, and his girlfriend was found tied up in the trunk of a car outside Paris.

In May, attackers in Paris tried unsuccessfully to kidnap the daughter and grandson of cryptocurrency exchange platform Paymium's chief executive.

In another case in France in May, police rescued the father of a cryptocurrency millionaire in a Paris suburb who was being held for ransom. Police were reportedly led to the house by phone signals, BBC News reported, and Le Parisien newspaper said his kidnappers demanded his wealthy son pay at least a five million euro ransom.

In early January, a 56-year-old man was found alive in the trunk of a car near the western city of Le Mans, BBC News reported. Media reports say his abductors had tried to extort money from his son, a cryptocurrency influencer based in Dubai.

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