A Swedish cryptocurrency trader has been sentenced to six and a half years in prison after sending sent two homemade pipe bombs to the offices of a UK cryptocurrency exchange. This comes after employees refused to reset one of his passwords.
Jermu Salonen, 43, emailed Cryptopay in August 2017 to ask them to change his password, but he took exception to their refusal, which they said contravened their privacy policy. In response he made a pipe bomb and sent it to two employees at the London-based exchange, which was set to detonate when opened.
Five Month Wait
Salonen’s package lay unopened for five months before an employee noticed it and began to open it, but quickly became suspicious of its contents and alerting the police. Explosives experts were sent to investigate, where they made the device safe before confirming that the it was “viable” and could have killed the opener.
Forensic experts extracted DNA samples from the device, and, through Interpol, found a match to Salonen. Swedish authorities then arrested him and searched his address, where they found a number of bomb-making components. On Friday a judge in Sweden sentenced Salonen to six and a half years for attempted murder.
Lucky Escape
Commander Clarke Jarrett, head of the Met Police Counter Terrorism Command, illustrated just how lucky the Cryptopay employee was to be alive:
Salonen seemingly made and sent a device that had the capability to seriously harm and even kill over something as inconsequential as a change of password. Fortunately the bomb did not detonate. It was due to sheer luck that the recipient ripped opened the package in the middle rather than using the envelope flap which would have activated the device.
