The defendants were accused of participating in an organized criminal group aimed at causing over 600 victims to unfavorably dispose of property in the amount of over PLN 40 million. Niko M. and Liubov D. allegedly misled the victims, in particular as to the possibility of making a profit from financial investments related to offering the purchase of cryptocurrency bitcoin through fake investment platforms called aspenholding.com, olympusmarkets.com, lvgrowmarkets.com and gorisemarkets.com. An indictment was brought against them to the District Court in Rzeszów.
Bitcoin scam. The suspects were supposed to create a “technical base”
The defendants were also accused of money laundering. The crime was to prevent or significantly impede the determination of the criminal origin, place of placement, detection, seizure or adjudication of the means of payment originating from the above-described practice – explains Central Office for Combating Cybercrime.
The defendants' actions were to consist in creating a “technical base” – a call center, intended for communication with the victims and persuading them through the so-called advisors, consultants or account managers to install a program for remote operation of their computer. Gaining access to the victims' bank accounts allowed them to perform remote operations on computers. In this way, the defendants allegedly carried out a number of financial operations using foreign online currency exchange offices and investment exchanges.
“The practice used methods of masking and anonymizing IP addresses, as well as the so-called spoofing mechanism, which involves the perpetrators impersonating an entity initiating a connection unrelated to the case. The so-called simboxes were also used, i.e. devices using telecommunications infrastructure to anonymize calls. telephone calls,” we read.
More than 600 people from all over Poland were defrauded. They face up to 20 years in prison
Money obtained from the victims' accounts were to be transferred transfers immediate (e.g. Elixir) to the accounts of other natural persons or direct online transfers to thing stock exchanges or currency exchange offices enabling the exchange of market currency into cryptocurrency. For this purpose, they allegedly used the data of bank cards issued for the bank account, i.e. card number, expiry date, CVV/CVC code, which they allegedly obtained from the victims under the pretext of verifying data for the purpose of opening an account on the platform.
In order to anonymize the transfer of funds, the defendants also allegedly used the so-called cryptocurrency mixers, which made it impossible to analyze the flow of these funds and the destination of their transfer. The perpetrators allegedly used manipulative techniques to achieve a financial goal at the expense of the victims. The defendants face a maximum prison sentence of 20 years.