The owner of Seznam.cz server, Ivo Lukacovic, has tweeted that an anonymous person is demanding bitcoins from him in exchange for not harming his company, which is why Lukacovic wants to turn to the police and has offered a financial reward for catching the blackmailer.
Prague police spokesman Jan Danek said that he did not know whether Lukacovic had contacted the police. He can file a criminal complaint with police anywhere.
According to an e-mail posted by Lukacovic on Twitter, the anonymous person wants 12.7 bitcoin (roughly 8.1 million crowns) within three days. If he fails to pay, he risks causing damage to his company.
In this context, the anonymous person mentioned a two-year-old incident in which police officers evacuated ten buildings where Seznam.cz operates across the Czech Republic because of an anonymous report of a bomb. The author of the e-mail claims that he was behind the anonymous report. He has sent the identification details of a Bitcoin wallet for Lukacovic to transfer the bitcoins.
“I am offering several million crowns as a reward for the tracking down and final conviction of the owner of the Bitcoin wallet. You will get as many millions of crowns as he gets years (to spend in prison),” Lukacovic responded to the above email on Twitter, adding that he would hand the matter over to the police.
Lukacovic founded Seznam.cz in May 1996. The company operates the eponymous search engine Seznam.cz, which is the Czech leader in general search services, the news server Seznam Zpravy, Seznam TV, the Mapy.cz service and Sbazar, Sreality and Sauto. It also offers, among others, the comparison engine Zbozi.cz, Pocasi.cz, a browser and the video portal Stream.cz.
In June, the anti-trust office (UOHS) allowed Seznam Media from the Seznam.cz group to buy Zdenek Porybny’s company Silky. Through the acquisition, Seznam.cz will also acquire Borgis, which publishes the daily Pravo and supplies content to Novinky.cz news server.
Last year, Seznam’s pre-tax profit fell 34.5 percent to 1.28 billion crowns. Revenues, on the other hand, rose 5.8 percent to 5.93 billion.
Source: CTK
