The Spanish police have abolished the large -scale investment fraud operation, exceeding the cumulative loss of $ 11.8 million (€ 10 million).
During the simultaneous raids in Barcelona, Madrid, Mallorca, and Elikante, 21 persons were arrested by Mosos D’Sakwadra, Civil Guard and National Police.
With arrest, police agents seized more than $ 1.5 million € 1.3 million in seven luxury vehicles and cash and cryptocurrency.
The fraudsters started the operation in 2022 and since then, the authorities received more than three hundred complaints from the victims across the country.
“He persuaded his victims to invest fake through a network of fake advisors and experts, manipulation websites and telephone call centers,” Police say,
“The group operates as a shell investment company that advertises its services on social media. They offered investments in reputed companies or cryptocurrency sectors to woo their victims.”
Modus Operandi is similar to “romance batting” (“pig butcher”) scams, where fraudsters woo individuals through social media advertisements, misuse legitimate brands and including fake adimginents.
Subsequently, the scammers directed the victims to fake cryptocurrency, forex, tech stock, or gold investment portals, showing fake benefits on the dashboard and even allowing small withdrawal in the beginning.
Once there is a large investment, the withdrawal stops, and the scammers impose “clearance tax” or “processing fee” to the victims who want to fix their money, but only to steal even more from them.
In the uniquely organized operations dissolved by the Spanish police, scammers use call centers that mimic professional investment firms, with operators trained with scripts and psychological manipulation techniques.
Police say Barcelona-based call centers supporting the operation were rented for three to four months to obstruct the investigation, and a “panic button” facilitates that would automatically close all systems in the police raid case.
The presence of such call centers in Spain is unusual, as they are usually hosted in Asian or Eastern European countries where law enforcement is easy to develop.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8i-iwym0q8
Last week, officials in Spain abolished a large cryptocurrency investment fraud of more than $ 540 million (€ 460 million) stolen from 5,000 victims worldwide.
In April 2025, the Spanish police arrested six persons, who used AI to generate fake investment advertisements, deceit to give 19 million euros ($ 20.9 million) to more than 200 victims.
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