The Mossos and the Civil Guard dismantled a network in Albania with 17,000 possible victims in Spain.
The Mossos d'Esquadra and the Civil Guard have arrested "one of the main bosses" of the global macro-scam of financial fraud faking investments in foreign exchange and cryptocurrency markets.
The person investigated, Pablo AM, 33, was arrested on Wednesday when he was still inside the plane at El Prat airport (Barcelona) on a flight from Romania.
The defendant was "one of the top managers of the EverFx platform" during the investigation, according to the press release released this Friday.
He faces the crimes of continued fraud and criminal organization.
The company sponsored the Sevilla Fútbol Club.
The detainee was "in charge of managing all the Spanish victims through commission agents who redirected them to the EverFX platform," according to the police.
One of those alleged commission agents is Gonzalo S., arrested in an operation in Andorra in January 2021, for allegedly defrauding through the GNZ Academy with false
trading
courses .
Through its website, the police indicate, it redirected the victims to the EverFX platforms, one of the "that accumulated the most complaints and denunciations of fraud" in the investigation, affirm the Mossos and the Civil Guard, in a case coordinated by the investigative court 2 of La Seu d'Urgell.
The contacts with the victims were made "through
call centers
located on the periphery of the European Union", where "false
brokers
deceived them with the use of a complex system of social engineering", continues the police information.
The Mossos and the Civil Guard intervened in Albania, where they arrested two people and are still looking for three more.
One of them is a relevant businessman in the country, Amant J., with ties to the former Ministry of Defense, according to police sources.
His arrest warrant has caused an earthquake in the European country.
The arrested Pablo AM was subjected to wiretapping, as well as an extensive investigation during the investigation, which started in 2018. He is one of the people who intervened in the presentation of the sponsorship of Sevilla, in October 2019, which was attended other officials of the EverFX company.
Police have conversations, emails, pictures and social media posts about his connection to EverFX.
Currently, however, there are no references to the company in the resume of the suspect posted on social networks.
Consulted by this newspaper as a result of police information linking it to an international scam, the company that owned the EverFX trademark when the investigation was carried out, Intercertus ICC, assured that it was unaware that it was being investigated and that they were acting according to the best market practices.
The company has changed its name and has been bought by another group.
The websites everfx.com, everfxglobal.com, global.everfx.com and intercertus.com have been included in a list of fraudulent websites carried out and made public by the Mossos d'Esquadra.
The police have focused a large part of their efforts on the company because of its links to Spain and because part of the business has authorization to operate in the financial markets of Cyprus and, therefore, in Spain, as confirmed by the CNMV to this daily.
The British financial market supervisor, FCA, with its own regulation, vetoed Intercertus ICC in 2021 and EverFX as an operator in the United Kingdom.
The investigation of the Mossos and the Civil Guard is part of a joint European operation of eight countries against the "biggest financial scam in the world" that they have investigated.
On November 8, a joint action was carried out by eight countries, in which each of them intervened in the place where the largest number of
call centers
were allegedly accumulated from where their citizens were called.
Spain acted in Albania, and Germany did it in Georgia.
The investigation has allowed the police to establish a list of more than 470 websites that they claim are fraudulent, including EverFX and Intercertus.
According to police, the network operated globally, switching from one trademark to another as they gained a bad reputation due to complaints from victims.
The
modus operandi
was always the same: an initial investment of 250 euros that multiplied exponentially with the intervention of a false
broker
who gained trust and convinced the victim to invest more money.
A complainant in La Seu d'Urgell lost more than 800,000 euros.
But that money, according to the agents, did not really end up in markets or financial products, but rather went directly into the hands of the criminal organization.
The police assure that they earned 400 euros a minute, 50 million every three months.
