The Ansbacher Kripo and the Central Office Cybercrime Bavaria have dug a call center in Bulgaria, which was used by investment fraudsters as a base of operations.
Sofia / Ansbach - On July 27th, the Central Office Cybercrime Bavaria and the Ansbach Criminal Police Inspectorate hit a heavy blow against internationally active investment fraudsters.
This was preceded by months of intensive investigative work, as reported by the Central Franconia Police Headquarters.
Sofia: Four investment fraudsters arrested
Together with Bulgarian authorities, the officers searched several office buildings and apartments in Sofia at the end of July.
Four men were arrested.
You are suspected of having defrauded investors in the entire German-speaking area via cybertrading.
Their base of operations was a call center in Bulgaria.
The investors have been cheated by several million euros.
Ansbach: Investors invested millions in non-existent products
The Ansbach criminal police had previously received criminal complaints from victims from all over Bavaria.
Some of them had invested large sums of money on supposed trading platforms on the Internet.
In fact, however, the money flowed into the accounts of the alleged fraudsters via complex money laundering networks.
Investors had found out about investment opportunities on various websites in advance, disclosing their contact details.
The fraudsters used the data obtained in this way to contact interested parties from a call center with the help of specially trained telephone agents.
They were offered lucrative investments in the area of so-called binary options, CFDs, forex or cryptocurrencies via phone calls and emails.
Ansbach: Investors cheated out of millions
Using simulated charts, the perpetrators presented investors with alleged profits in considerable amounts.
In addition, the cheated were asked to make further investments.
The supposedly well-spent money gradually disappeared into the perpetrators' pockets.
Some of the investors invested large sums of money.
In one case from the district of Ansbach, an amount in the six-figure range was stolen in this way.
The total damage known to date amounts to several million euros.
The number of unreported cases is likely to be much higher.
Sofia: Officials secured extensive evidence
In addition to the arrests, the investigators in Sofia managed to secure extensive evidence.
This mainly included electronic data.
From their evaluation, the police hope to gain further knowledge about the people behind the call center.
The perpetrators are allegedly responsible for the fraudulent platforms alphafinancialgroup.com (offline), zurichfinancialgroup.co, genevacapitalgroup.com and promarketsgroup.com.
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