Law enforcement agents from Bulgaria, Cyprus, Germany, and Serbia, supported by Europol and Eurojust, have teamed up against organized crime groups involved in online investment fraud. This criminal network, comprising several different criminal actors operating through boiler rooms, lured victims into investing large amounts of money into fake cryptocurrency schemes. Europol set up an Operational Task Force to support the cross-border investigation.
The Action day on 11 January 2022 led to the following results:
- 15 arrests, 14 in Serbia and one in Germany;
- 261 individuals questioned, some of whom are awaiting prosecution (42 in Bulgaria, 2 in Cyprus, 3 in Germany and 214 in Serbia);
- 22 locations searched (5 in Bulgaria, 2 in Cyprus, 15 in Serbia) including: 4 call centres and 11 residences in Serbia; 2 residences in Cyprus; 2 companies and 3 residences in Bulgaria.
- Seizures include 3 hardware wallets with about USD 1 million in cryptocurrencies on it and about EUR 50 000 in cash, 3 vehicles, electronic equipment and data back-ups, documents.
At least €2 Million in Losses
The suspects used advertisements on social networks to lure victims to websites covertly operated by the criminals, which offered seemingly exceptional investment opportunities in cryptos. The victims, mainly from Germany, would first invest low, three-digit sums. Fake price hikes led to supposedly lucrative profits for investors and persuaded them to make transfers of higher amounts. The financial damage to German victims is estimated to be over two million euros, while other countries such as Switzerland, Australia, and Canada also have victims.
The investigation suggests that the number of unreported cases is likely to be much higher. This would mean that the illegal gains generated by the criminal groups, with at least four call centers in eastern Europe, may be in the hundreds of millions of euros.
