Spain’s Guardia Civil police, with the support of Europol and law enforcement agencies from Estonia, France and the USA, have arrested five members of an alleged criminal network engaged in cryptocurrency investment fraud.
The investigators allege that the perpetrators have laundered €460 million in illicit profits stolen through online crypto investment fraud from over 5,000 victims across 30 countries.
Three people were arrested in the Canary Islands and two in Madrid.
Europol, headquartered in The Hague, said the network allegedly used associates around the world to raise funds through cash withdrawals, bank transfers and crypto-transfers.
They said that they started supporting the investigation in 2023. Since then, ‘Europol’s financial crime experts have assisted Spanish authorities by coordinating the investigation, providing operational support, and delivering strategic analysis’, they said in a statement.
‘A crypto specialist was deployed to Spain to assist national investigators, contributing to the successful completion of the operation,’ said Europol.
Investigators suspect the organisation of establishing a corporate and banking network based in Hong Kong, using payment gateways and user accounts in the names of different people and in different exchanges to receive, store and transfer criminal funds.
The investigation is ongoing, added Europol.
Online fraud is one of the main key threats to the EU’s internal security identified in Europol’s Serious and Organised Criminal Threat Assessment (EU SOCTA), published in March 2025.
‘The scale, variety, sophistication and reach of online fraud schemes are unprecedented,’ said Europol. They expect it to outpace other types of serious and organised crime ‘as it is being accelerated by AI, aiding social engineering and access to data’.
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