Mark G Law authorities in Belgium, France, and Israel have got reportedly put a stop to an international scam promising high profits of up to 35% on crypto investments. A big French private organization and a French local authority are reported to be among the 85 victims of this network. In total, ten suspects related to the case have already been arrested.
€6 Million International Investments Scam
A collaboration of the French Gendarmerie Nationale, the Belgian Police Judiciaire Fédérale and the Israel Police has brought down a big network allegedly involved with money laundering and binary investment fraud, Europol announced. An unnamed person who was already convinced of carbon tax fraud is suspected to be the mastermind of the scam.
The investigation into this network started in 2018, Europol revealed it. At the beginning of 2019, four suspects had been arrested in France. And at the end of 2019, five additional suspects were arrested in Israel using the support of an international task force set up by the European agency.
The group allegedly established online platforms promising high returns on investments in cryptocurrencies as well as gold and diamonds. The victims had been promised between 5 and 35% profits on return, as well as the group members, pretended to manage their accounts for them in the beginning effectively and then motivated them to invest more money.
A big French private organization and a French local authority are reported to be among the 85 victims of the network. The scam is believed by an investigator to be responsible for defrauding an amount of at least €6 million. The investigators have also found out invoices for a few million euros, which the group members hadn’t yet gotten their hands on. Authorities have seized more than €1 million from the network’s accounts.
“The criminal group approached victims by phone, offering them huge profits on investments in bitcoins of up to 35 percent,” explained the European Union Agency for Criminal Justice Co-operation, Eurojust. “ To get their trust, victims at first made small gains on these investments, thereby motivating them to invest further. Victims had been after that defrauded on subsequent payments. These were transferred to fake companies, which have been established up for this purpose by the OCG [Organised Criminal Group]. The profits were after that quickly transferred via bank accounts in the other EU Member States to bank accounts in various Asian countries and Turkey.”
