DIGITAL LIFE

Several call centers across Europe controlled by organized crime groups involved in an online cryptocurrency investment scam

Several call centers across Europe controlled by organized crime groups involved in an online cryptocurrency investment scam were closed this week following an international investigation launched in June 2022 at the request of Germany.

Police and prosecutors in Serbia, Bulgaria, Cyprus and Germany, led by Europol and Eurojust, found that suspects working in these call centers tricked victims into investing large sums of money in fraudulent cryptocurrency schemes. These scams are not new and are known as “Pig Slaughter”.

“The suspects used advertisements on social media to lure victims to websites secretly operated by criminals that offered seemingly exceptional investment opportunities in cryptocurrencies,” Europol said on Thursday.

Victims, mainly from Germany, would first invest small amounts of money, so the initial profit, of course, fake, would encourage them to invest larger amounts.

It is estimated that victims in Germany lost two million euros, but they are not the only ones. There are also victims of this fraud in other countries such as Switzerland, Australia and Canada.

These are just the cases where victims reported the fraud, and investigators believe that the number of unreported cases is likely much higher.

“This would mean that illegal profits obtained by criminal groups, with at least four call centers in Eastern Europe, could amount to hundreds of millions of euros”, says the newspaper. Europol announcement.

Europol announced that on 11 January, police arrested 15 suspects, 14 in Serbia and one person in Germany, and searches were carried out at 22 locations in Bulgaria, Cyprus and Serbia. 261 people were questioned (214 in Serbia), some of whom will be prosecuted.

Police also seized electronic equipment, data backups and documents from the searched locations, as well as three hardware wallets containing around $1 million worth of cryptocurrencies, €50,000 in cash and 3 vehicles.

When it comes to "pig slaughter" scams, it's not impossible to recognize them before you get scammed. Some of the warning signs are:

– You are contacted by someone you lost contact with a long time ago or by a stranger on social networks or by email;

– The URL of the investment platform does not correspond to the official website of the popular cryptocurrency exchange, but it is very similar;

– Windows displays a warning when you run an investment application that you downloaded or an antivirus marks it as potentially dangerous;

– An investment opportunity sounds too good to be true.

mundophone