Spain arrests cryptocurrency investment scammer, seizes luxury car worth 2.5 million euros

Efe recently reported that the Spanish National Guard arrested one of Europe’s largest cryptocurrency fraudsters, a 45-year-old Portuguese man, in the Spanish city of Valencia (east). Its assets of more than 2.5 million euros have been seized.

The suspect was charged with seven counts of fraud and money laundering for creating a so-called cryptocurrency investment platform on a website and promoting it through various forums, radio shows, sporting events and even charity events.

The Western National Guard said its purpose was to attract the attention and investment of a large number of Spanish and Portuguese people. The National Guard, with the cooperation of private security, began investigating the detained suspect last August.

The platform promises investors weekly returns of at least 2.5%, with yields that will depend on their contributions. Some investors even play roles in the scam to attract more investors.

Known as a "Ponzi scheme," this method is a scam that attempts to mislead victims into believing that their profits come from legitimate activities, while the funds come from other defrauded investors.

In this way, the man's rigged cryptocurrency investments were a huge "success", tricking victims into investing more money while also attracting more investors.

After an investigation, police identified several victims in Spain and found that the suspect, who had a high standard of living, had managed to commit crimes in countries such as Luxembourg, Switzerland and Portugal.

On December 2 last year, police conducted three searches of the suspect's home, company headquarters and a workshop containing some of the goods. In addition, the Western National Guard has frozen several of its bank accounts and shut down the website with access to the platform and the pages used to promote it.

In addition, the police seized about 20 luxury cars with a total value of more than 2.5 million euros.

According to Spanish media reports, police also seized various documents, as well as electronic devices such as computers, tablets, mobile phones and USB cryptocurrency wallets.

The proceedings have been transferred to the Court of Valencia, Spain. The operation was carried out by members of the Technical Investigation Team of the Valencian National Guard and the Economic Crime Squad in cooperation with Europol.