Europol Busts €460M Crypto Investment Fraud Network, Five Arrested Across Spain

The arrests, carried out by Spain’s Guardia Civil with assistance from Europol, as well as law enforcement agencies in the United States, France, and Estonia, targeted a syndicate accused of defrauding over 5,000 investors out of €460 million (approximately $542 million).

According to Europol’s notice on Monday, June 30, three suspects were apprehended in the Canary Islands while two others were arrested in Madrid last Wednesday. The alleged network leaders reportedly operated a sophisticated global system of associates, collecting funds via bank transfers, cash withdrawals, and crypto transactions.

🔎 Watch the operation unfold as the Spanish Guardia Civil, with the support of Europol and police from Estonia, France, and the US, dismantle a criminal network engaged in cryptocurrency investment fraud.

Authorities revealed that the group built a complex corporate and banking infrastructure based in Hong Kong, leveraging payment gateways and user accounts registered under different names across various exchanges to funnel illicit funds.

This case stands among Spain’s largest crypto-related fraud busts to date. Earlier in January, Spanish authorities, in collaboration with the T3 Financial Crime Unit, froze $26.4 million in cryptocurrency tied to a European money laundering network.

The T3 Financial Crime Unit, a task force backed by TRON, Tether, and blockchain analytics firm TRM Labs, worked alongside Spain’s Guardia Civil to track down digital assets linked to the criminal organization. 

The arrests come shortly after the US Department of Justice announced in June the seizure of more than $225 million connected to cryptocurrency investment scams, including pig butchering schemes. In this tactic, fraudsters gain victims’ trust to extract increasingly larger sums. 

That same month, five individuals pleaded guilty to orchestrating a separate $37 million crypto scam involving funds sent to Cambodia. The defendants, Joseph Wong, Yicheng Zhang, Jose Somarriba, Shengsheng He, and Jingliang Su, contacted victims directly through social media, messaging platforms, and dating apps, engaging in lengthy text conversations and even making calls to win their trust and convince them to invest in their crypto investment scheme.