Coordinated actions by law enforcement in Belgium, Bulgaria, Germany and Israel led to two arrests and other suspects interrogated in November, Europol said on Thursday.
The European Union law enforcement agency said this was the second phase of an operation that led to nine arrests in October in Cyprus, Germany and Spain in connection with the laundering of illicit funds generated by fraudulent cryptocurrency investment platforms.
At the time, 600 million euros ($699 million) had been laundered through the network, according to Eurojust, the EU’s criminal justice cooperation agency. Europol has now set the amount at 700 million euros.
Sebastian Bley, senior specialist in economic crime at Europol, told OCCRP that the targeted network had a “corporate structure” including departments responsible for infrastructure, sales, advertising, financial flows and money laundering. He said the network had managed to defraud people on an “industrial” scale.
The criminal network is said to have lured scam victims through online advertisements, social engineering through criminal call centers and fake cryptocurrency investment platforms that promised high returns.
After the victims transferred their cryptocurrency, the money was stolen and laundered through various blockchains and cryptocurrency exchanges, Europol said.
The actions in November targeted companies and suspects that Europol said were part of the ‘affiliate marketing’ infrastructure, using false advertising to support the online scams. Europol said in a statement that affiliate marketing was a “key pillar of the investment fraud ecosystem”.
Online advertisements for fake investment schemes posing as celebrities, politicians and respected media outlets, often with deepfake videos, had become a “major challenge” around the world, Europol said, with data from potential investors then used to defraud them.
Europol has not named any of the suspects or companies that were targeted. No details are known about where the two arrests took place.
In March this year the Scam empire research led by OCCRP and Swedish Television (SVT) revealed how affiliate marketers have provided contact information of potential investors to defraud networks in exchange for lucrative commissions.
The research showed how people were lured in by advertisements for get-rich-quick investments on mainstream websites and social media platforms – often using fake news articles with purported celebrity endorsements. When they signed up, their information was sent to scammers.
Scam Empire was based on 1.9 terabytes of leaked data obtained by SVT and revealed how two groups of call centersbased in Israel, Eastern Europe and the country of Georgia, convinced people around the world to make ‘investments’ totaling at least $275 million.
Europol could not confirm whether the network targeted by its recent operations overlapped with the Israeli/European group exposed in the Scam Empire investigation.
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