Words by

Larissa Kyzer

Two young men, aged 23 and 24, were charged in the Reykjavík District court today with attempting to blackmail Finnur Geirsson, the director of Icelandic chocolate company Nói Siríus, Morgunblaðið reports.
According to the charges, the men put a threatening letter in Finnur’s mailbox last January. The letter contained two Nói Siríus chocolate bars—one mint-filled Pipp and one caramel-filled bar—which had been injected with brake fluid.
The letter demanded that Nói Siríus pay 10 million ISK or else similarly poisoned chocolate bars would be circulated by the blackmailers. The same threat would be carried out if the police were contacted. The letter went on to claim that even if the plot were made public by the company, the necessary recall of chocolate products would significantly hurt sales and damage the company’s reputation. The blackmailers followed their letter with three threatening phone calls, during which they demanded payment from Nói Siríus again.  
The suspects were arrested when trying to pick up a package which they believed contained 10 million ISK. In accordance with the blackmailers’ instructions, the package was left in a parked car in a lot next to the Chamber of Commerce in Reykjavík. The younger suspect had drugs in his possession when he was arrested, which has added to his charges. A statement issued by Nói Siríus following the arrests referred to the extortion attempt as “amateurish.”
To further add to the intrigue, it seems that Sigurður Ingi Þórðarson, aka ‘Siggi the Hacker,’ was briefly implicated in the blackmail case, Vísir reports. Twenty-year-old Siggi, once a Wikileaks insider, made headlines when it came to light that he had been working as a double agent for the FBI. During an interview with The Grapevine this summer, Siggi told us that he had been brought in for questioning by the police, who had been told that he was the ring leader of the extortion operation. According to Siggi, he was held for seventeen hours before he was questioned, but was later released without any charges.
Siggi said that one of the blackmailing suspects had worked at a security firm that he co-owned, but had been fired for theft. Siggi suspected that the blackmailers had taken inspiration from a situation which had been discussed widely at the firm, in which the chocolate company Nestlé received identical extortion threats as those made to Nói Siríus.