Italian and Albanian authorities bust crypto scam

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Italian and Albanian authorities busted a crypto scam of organized crime groups.

The group had stolen around 15 million euros (about $16 million), the European Union Agency for Judicial Cooperation in Criminal Matters (Eurojust) said in a press release on Monday (December 19th).

The group operated from a call center in Albania, contacting victims through unidentifiable phone numbers and offering zero-risk investments in cryptocurrencies, according to the press release.

They delivered victims an immediate financial gain on a small investment and then, after gaining the victims’ trust, convinced them to invest all their capital, the statement said.

Once the victims transferred those funds, the criminals embezzled the money and made themselves untraceable, the statement said.

In a third part of the fraud, other members of the organized crime group contacted the victims and convinced them to make additional payments which they believed would allow them to recover the lost funds, according to the press release.

The investigation by authorities in Italy and Albania, with Eurojust facilitating cross-border cooperation, seized 160 electronic devices, a cellphone and assets worth 3 million euros (about $3.2 million), according to the press release.

The announcement comes two weeks after French authorities charged two people with fraud and money laundering after they allegedly promised counterfeit money or digital wallets for cryptocurrency and then stole the funds.

Bloomberg reported on Dec. 9 that the scammers created fake identities, arranged meetings with the victims, received crypto assets from the victims, and then accessed the funds through the victims’ phones.

Fraudsters stole at least 2 million euros (about $2.1 million), according to the report.

In the United States, the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau (CFPB) reported on November 10 that it had received more than 8,300 complaints related to crypto-assets between October 2018 and September 2022 and that 40% of these complaints were about frauds and scams.

Our analysis of consumer complaints suggests that bad actors are mining cryptoassets to defraud the public, CFPB director Rohit Chopras said at the time. Americans are also reporting transaction issues, frozen accounts, and lost crypto-asset savings.

How consumers pay online with stored credentials Convenience drives some consumers to store their payment credentials with merchants, while security concerns give other customers pause. For How We Pay Digitally: Stored Credentials Edition, a collaboration with Amazon Web Services, PYMNTS surveyed 2,102 US consumers to analyze the consumer dilemma and reveal how merchants can overcome holdouts.

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