MADRID (dpa-AFX) – Spanish police, in cooperation with authorities in Germany and other European countries, have dismantled a gang that allegedly stole around 2.4 billion euros through fraudulent cryptocurrency exchanges . In Spain alone, according to current knowledge, more than 17,000 investors have been deceived, the Spanish police unit Guardia Civil announced on Monday. The total number of victims could reach hundreds of thousands. Spanish authorities, in cooperation with authorities in the country, arrested the two suspected gang leaders in Albania on 8 and 9 November. Investigations are underway against 16 other suspects, he said.
The Guardia Civil (civil guard) said it was working with Catalan police Mossos D’Esquadra and with authorities in several other countries – including Albania and Germany, Sweden, Finland, Latvia, Ukraine and Georgia. In the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, for example, a call center involving around 800 employees was closed.
Investigations began in 2018 after an elderly woman from the Spanish region of Catalonia reported that she had been defrauded of €800,000. Potential victims were called from call centers in Albania and other countries. The callers “pretended to know the financial world well. They manipulated their victims with persuasion techniques and promised high profits,” he said. Many would have trusted the gang and, above all, would have transferred ever larger sums for alleged transactions with cryptocurrencies. Criminals often managed to install remote access software on victims’ computers.
“We estimate the gang was earning around 400 euros per minute,” he said. But now it’s broken. “They thought they could work with impunity, but now they’ve had a nasty surprise,” a Guardia Civil spokesman said. Many of the gang’s employees apparently knew nothing of the criminal history. They should not be held responsible by the authorities of the respective country, said a police spokesman on request. The number of victims in Germany and other countries was not initially reported./er/DP/he