Hundreds of employees, fifteen call centers, thousands of victims: Eurojust, the European Union’s judicial cooperation unit, has succeeded in stopping a cryptocurrency scam which allowed the criminals to reap more than two billion euros. And it all started from… Catalonia.
17,000 victims in Spain
Indeed, it was thanks to an elderly woman residing in Puigcerdà that this vast network was able to be dismantled. In 2018, this lady was offered an investment in crypto to the tune of 250 euros. The so-called investors then made her believe that she would earn more if she invested more, according to our colleagues 324. With this method, they extracted more than 500,000 euros from her. Before pretending to be lawyers to denounce their own scam. Results of the races: 800,000 euros in total.
Therefore, once the complaint was filed, the Mossos collaborated with the Guardia Civil and then Eurojust before discovering similar cases all over Spain. 17,000 victims are thus deplored, only in the Iberian peninsula. The scam having made victims all over the world thanks to hundreds of employees distributed in about fifteen call centers located in Andorra and in the countries of the East (Bulgaria, Albania, Georgia, North Macedonia or even Ukraine).
“The arrest of the two main leaders of the criminal organization and 16 people under investigation who carried out scams that always followed the same pattern”relates 324. This is called a nice net.