The DutchNews reported that some 2,500 Dutch individuals have been warned by the regulator AFM that their names appear on a boiler room’s potential client list. The list was seized during an international criminal investigation in the course of which police raided premises in Marbella in March 2020. The Dutch Police started the investigation over two years ago after a total of 40 people reported they had been conned out of a combined €6m by boiler rooms operating under such company names as FX-CI, Global Trading Investment Group, or Power Capital Financial Trading.
The scammers put together data on potential Dutch clients, the so-called ‘sucker list’, by collecting information volunteered by unwary would-be investors on investment sites, or by simply clicking on ads on Facebook or other websites, the AFM said. As usual in the scammer scene, the sucker lists circulated in between different boiler rooms. This means potential victims can be approached again and again.
Figures from the national Fraud Helpdesk show that the number of reports of investment fraud has increased from 147 in 2017 to 429 in 2019. In total, 379 people lost more than € 10.7 million in 2019. The actual numbers are probably (much) higher, because people do not always report investment fraud.
AFM warning (link)
In fact, trading in customer-victim data is a major source of income for scammers. In the dark web, customer data is traded as so-called dark goods (read this FinTelegram Report). Depending on the amount of data, the data of a private person is sold from $15. With PayPal or credit card data, the price can rise to several hundred euros.
