EUROPOL: Online fraud ring broken up in Serbia, Germany, Cyprus

“Law enforcement and judicial authorities from Bulgaria, Cyprus, Germany and Serbia, supported by Europol and Eurojust, have teamed up against organised crime groups involved in online investment fraud. This criminal network, comprising a number of different criminal actors operating through call centres, 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,” a press release said.

It said that the Serbian police arrested 14 people and that the police in Germany arrested one more person involved in the call center fraud.

A total of 261 people were questioned, including 214 in Serbia and 22 locations (4 call centers and 11 residences in Serbia) were searched.

“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,” the press release said.

According to EUROPOL, the suspects used advertisements on social networks to lure victims to websites they operated covertly offering seemingly exceptional investment opportunities in cryptocurrencies.

“Currently, it is estimated that the financial damage to German victims is over two million euro, 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 centres in eastern Europe, may be in the hundreds of millions of euro,” the press release said.

Europol said it supported this investigation since June 2022 following an initial request from Germany, helping exchange information and coordinating activities with two experts in Serbia and Bulgaria on the day of the arrests. “On the day of the action, Eurojust hosted a coordination center to facilitate the information exchange and support cooperation between involved authorities during the operational activities,” it added.