Crypto Fraud Network Dismantled by European Agencies

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The Euro­pean Law Enforce­ment Agen­cies dis­man­tled a cryp­to fraud net­work and seized over $1 mil­lion in cryp­tocur­ren­cies and €50,000 in cash.

Recent­ly, the favorite trick of fraud­sters has been to lure inno­cent cit­i­zens by offer­ing lucra­tive invest­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties through cryp­tocur­ren­cies. Social media has made it eas­i­er not only for busi­ness­es but also for fraud­sters to scale across var­i­ous nations.

Accord­ing to a press release, Euro­just and Europol, the Euro­pean Union Agen­cies, col­lab­o­rat­ed to dis­man­tle the cryp­to fraud net­work oper­at­ing from Bul­gar­ia, Cyprus, and Serbia.

15 People Arrested for Crypto Fraud Across Europe

The Euro­pean Agen­cies have arrest­ed 15 peo­ple so far for run­ning a cryp­to fraud net­work that defraud­ed cit­i­zens of Ger­many, Switzer­land, Aus­tria, Aus­tralia, and Cana­da of more than €10 million.

The fraud­sters used to oper­ate through four call cen­ters. The Euro­pean Agen­cies iden­ti­fied over 250 work­places and raid­ed 18 loca­tions. Dur­ing these raids, they seized three cars, two lux­u­ry apart­ments, $1 mil­lion in cryp­tocur­ren­cies, and over €50,000 in cash.

The press release reads, “The net­work attract­ed poten­tial investors online and often con­tact­ed vic­tims by phone to lure them into doing small invest­ments, speak­ing Eng­lish and Ger­man. After ini­tial gains, vic­tims invest­ed more mon­ey, which they sub­se­quent­ly lost.”

Scammers Use Artificial Intelligence for Malicious Activities

Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence has tak­en the inter­net by storm in recent months. But with great use cas­es always comes a greater chance of the tech being uti­lized by scammers. 

Peo­ple might iden­ti­fy a scam when they receive calls or direct mes­sages from an unknown per­son. But what if they get a video mes­sage from well-known personalities?

Scam­mers are cre­at­ing manip­u­lat­ed videos of well-known per­son­al­i­ties by using Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence. Such con­tent is called Deep­fake. A video of Sam Bankman-Fried direct­ing view­ers to a fake web­site by lur­ing them with give­aways was pop­u­lar in Novem­ber when the firm filed for bank­rupt­cy.

The com­mu­ni­ty needs to increase aware­ness, so peo­ple do not fall for such scams. It is essen­tial to refrain from click­ing on links received on social media DMs from strangers. Addi­tion­al­ly, when­ev­er a deep­fake video is in cir­cu­la­tion, users should do some ver­i­fi­ca­tion tests before tak­ing action.

To tack­le cryp­to fraud, crime depart­ments and agen­cies should be well-equipped with knowl­edge regard­ing blockchain and oth­er nec­es­sary tech­nolo­gies. UK Nation­al Crime Agency has announced a spe­cial cryp­to unit to deal with cryp­to crimes.

Got some­thing to say about cryp­to fraud or any­thing else? Write to us or join the dis­cus­sion on our Telegram chan­nel. You can also catch us on Tik Tok, Face­book, or Twit­ter.

For BeInCrypto’s lat­est Bit­coin (BTC) analy­sis, click here

Disclaimer

BeIn­Cryp­to has reached out to com­pa­ny or indi­vid­ual involved in the sto­ry to get an offi­cial state­ment about the recent devel­op­ments, but it has yet to hear back.



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