Enormous financial investment fraud: 9 Europeans arrested

A European criminal network is said to have earned and laundered over 600 million euros through dozens of cryptocurrency offerings. Last week, nine people were arrested at their respective residences: in Cologne, Catalonia, and Cyprus.

At the same time, house searches were carried out, as Eurojust reports. Only 300,000 euros in cash were seized. According to reports, 800,000 euros were secured in bank accounts, and another 415,000 euros equivalent in cryptocurrencies. Authorities in France and Belgium were in charge. The investigations and raids were coordinated via Eurojust, the European Union's coordination body for criminal justice.

The arrested individuals are accused of having accepted cryptocurrencies by promising high returns and never returning them. Victims were lured through advertisements on social networks, unsolicited phone calls, texts disguised as news reports, testimonials falsely attributed to celebrities, and stories about investors who had allegedly become rich.

More North Korean money launderers on US sanctions list

For years, the underworld of cryptocurrencies has also been a lucrative source for North Korean state criminals—on the one hand as a source of income, and on the other hand as a method for money laundering and circumventing international sanctions. On Tuesday, the US added two companies and eight North Koreans to the sanctions list due to money laundering. All eight are men; according to US data, five live in the People's Republic of China, two in the Russian Federation, and one in North Korea itself.

In the first nine months of 2025, the eleven member states of the Multilateral Sanctions Monitoring Team (MSMT) were able to attribute no less than 1,645 billion US dollars in cryptocurrency thefts to North Korean perpetrators. The IT consultancy Elliptic estimates even higher. Besides the delivery of weapons, ammunition, and soldiers to the Russian Federation, this is likely the largest source of income for the hereditary dictatorship, according to the latest MSMT report from October. It estimates that North Korea now generates more annually from these two areas of activity than the country earned in total annually before the international sanctions came into force in 2016.

In addition, the country has an army of agents who work for foreign companies under false identities, especially in the IT sector. Salaries earned and information obtained through this also flow to the regime. Personal interviews are a countermeasure.

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