Police officers from three countries worked together to identify and neutralize a large network allegedly involved in money laundering and binary investment fund.
Law enforcement officers from French Gendarmerie Nationale along with the Belgian Police and Israel Police, joined forces to solve this crime.
According to the information, the investigation started in 2018. At the beginning of 2019, police in France arrested four suspects. Moreover, at the end of 2019, law enforcement officers detained five other suspects in Israel.
The European Union Agency for Criminal Justice Cooperation, Eurojust assisted the Israel Police to arrest the suspects. The tenth suspect is the person who created this scam.
Based on the information, this group allegedly established online platforms to attract customers. Suspects offered huge profits on investments in Bitcoins. This group promised between 5% and 35% return on investment.
As part of this scam, suspects pretended to manage the account of their clients successfully. This way, they persuaded victims to invest more money. Moreover, at the beginning victims made small gains on these investments.
However, on subsequent payments, suspects used the funds of their victims for illegal purposes. This group used to transfer the money received from their victims to fake companies. The purpose of such companies was to facilitate the process. The next step was to move the profits via bank accounts in other EU member states as well as Asian countries and Turkey.
Police and crypto-related crimes
Police officers worked well as it is quite hard to identify crypto-related crimes. Based on the information provided by an investigator, this group is responsible for defrauding an amount of at least 6 million euros.
Moreover, investigators also recovered invoices for a few million euros. Hopefully, police identified this group before the suspects had time to spend the money stolen from their victims. Also, authorities already seized 1 million euros from the network’s accounts.
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