On Thursday, Interpol announced on the confiscation of virtual assets in the amount of $ 130 million during the international operation to combat cybercrime and money laundering. The operation was called Haechi-III and was carried out from June 28 to November 23, 2022. Its results became:
Arrest 975 criminals.
Closing more than 1600 cases ..
It is worth noting that among the arrested there were two people wanted by the South Korean government – the attackers participated in the Ponzi scheme and stole 28 million euros in 2,000 victims.
Law enforcement officers were able to cover one of the Indian call centers, where a group of criminals impersonated the employees of Interpol and Europol, in order to deceive Austria’s citizens to transfer money to their accounts. Call-centers worked from Delhi and Neuda. The scheme was very simple – the attackers told the victims that their personal data were stolen and crimes related to the spread of prohibited substances were committed on their behalf. And in order to relieve themselves of suspicions of “special services agents”, they demanded to transfer their cryptocurrency/money to a trust account using bank transfers, cryptotrazazations, gift codes or vaucers.
.
As a result of the raids conducted by the agency, 25.83 bitcoin was confiscated, as well as about $ 37,000 on various digital wallets. The bank account of one of the suspects, on which $ 37,000 was stored, was also frozen.
Interpol noted that the scam with the call center made the victims translate a total of $ 159,000 and that four cryptocurular crooks used by scammers were confiscated. In just five months of operation, about 2800 different accounts were blocked, which were used to launder illegally received funds.