Europol helps disrupt $540 million crypto investment fraud ring

Spanish authorities have arrested five individuals in Madrid and the Canary Islands, suspected of laundering $540 million (€460 million) from illegal cryptocurrency investment schemes and defrauding more than 5,000 victims.

The law enforcement operation was supported and coordinated by Europol and investigators from Estonia, France, and the U.S. (Homeland Security Investigations – HSI).

The investigation into the fraud ring started in 2023 On the day of the arrests a cryptocurrency expert was deployed in Spain to ensure that the stolen amounts could be retrieved/traced.

Although the investigation of methods used continues, the police believes they have have an understanding of the syndicate’s modus operandi, which involved routing the money through obfuscation channels in Asia.

“To carry out their fraudulent activities, the leaders of the criminal network allegedly used a net of associates spread around the world to raise funds through cash withdrawals, bank transfers and crypto-transfers,” explains Europol in the announcement.

“Investigators suspect the criminal organization of having set up a corporate and banking network based in Hong Kong, allegedly using payment gateways and user accounts in the names of different people and in different exchanges to receive, store and transfer criminal funds.”

Europol makes special mention of the role of artificial intelligence (AI) in proliferating investment scams that are becoming more sophisticated.

The Spanish police made another arrest in April 2025 that backs this trend of growing AI use in scams. During that operation, six individuals were arrested for their involvement in a large-scale cryptocurrency investment scam that relied on AI tools to generate convincing deepfake ads with celebrities.

Europol calls the scale, variety, and reach of these schemes “unprecedented,” warning that online fraud is expected to surpass all other types of organized fraud in the coming years.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in the U.S. recently reported that Americans lost $12.5 billion to online fraud in 2024, a record figure for the country.

Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Justice announced the retrieval of $225 million in cryptocurrency linked to investment fraud. Although the seizure of this amount is a record for the U.S. Secret Service, it represents a mere fraction of the anual losses.