A Europe-wide police operation has resulted in the arrest of five individuals, including the suspected mastermind of a cryptocurrency fraud operation thought to have scammed victims out of €100m ($118m).
Eurojust, the EU Agency for Criminal Justice Cooperation, said yesterday that it coordinated a joint action day in which police raided five properties in Spain, Portugal, Italy, Romania and Bulgaria.
The main suspect has been linked to a multi-year campaign in which victims were lured to professionally designed websites promising high returns on their crypto investments. However, once investors tried to recover their money, they were asked to pay additional fees before the website itself went offline, Eurojust said.
The scheme has been running since at least 2018, with victims and/or money laundering activities distributed across 23 countries.
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Europol provided “operational and analytical” support to local investigators since 2020 while Eurojust, the EU’s criminal justice cooperation agency, set up a joint investigation team (JIT) between the Spanish and Lithuanian authorities, as well as coordinating the join action day.
Investment fraud remains the highest-grossing cybercrime type, making scammers almost $6.6bn in 2024, according to the FBI.
Crypto investment schemes are particularly popular among scammers as victims often lack the technical know-how to see through the lies, while being drawn in by exaggerated claims of potential high returns.
It’s also relatively easy to set up a professional-looking website and investment ‘accounts’ for victims using AI tools, while the cryptocurrency itself can be hard for investigators to trace.
In May, law enforcement agencies in five European countries took down an organized crime group responsible for defrauding at least 100 victims to the tune of over €3m ($3.4m) by promising high returns on fake investment opportunities.
In June, European and US authorities teamed up to bust a cryptocurrency investment fraud scheme that netted €460m ($540m) from more than 5000 victims. Operation Borrelli led to five arrests in Madrid and the Canary Islands.
