With international support, German prosecutors and police officers have once again struck a blow against a gang of suspected online fraudsters.

According to investigators from the central offices for cybercrime in Bavaria (ZCB) and in Saxony, hundreds of thousands of investors around the world are said to be affected by the systematic fraud via trading platforms on the Internet.

The investigators are still estimating the damage to be in the billions.

In Germany alone, damage of “significantly more than 100 million euros” is assumed.

Marcus Young

Editor in Business.

  • Follow I follow

According to a statement from the Bamberg Public Prosecutor's Office, where the ZCB is based, the international network called "Milton Group" has been investigated at great expense for years because of commercial gang fraud, the formation of a criminal organization and money laundering.

According to the prosecutors' findings so far, the suspects are said to have followed a tried and tested pattern: Alleged financial advisors persuade private investors to invest in supposedly lucrative and risk-free products, often in connection with a cryptocurrency.

The funds raised via trading platforms on the Internet were actually never invested.

Via the Internet and ongoing support from call centers, the customer is suggested that there will be further transactions and profits.

If an investor asks critical questions or demands payment, the investment is said to have suffered a surprising slump or contact is broken off completely.

For years, the Federal Criminal Police Office has been talking about cyber trading fraud as an ever-increasing "criminal phenomenon".

Access in five countries

As the prosecutors from Bavaria now announced, two weeks ago investigators searched numerous offices, call centers and private homes in five European countries in a large-scale operation and secured numerous incriminating evidence.

Five suspects were arrested as part of the raid, which was carried out in parallel in Georgia, North Macedonia, Albania and Bulgaria.

Numerous investigators, also from other European countries, were in action.

In the Georgian capital Tbilisi alone, five public prosecutors and 60 police officers and IT forensic experts from Germany supported the local authorities.

In addition to more than 500 computers, mobile phones and data carriers, assets worth tens of millions were arrested.

Specifically, it was about bank accounts, cash and Bitcoin wallets.

In Germany, the local focal points were the responsibility of the criminal police in Upper Franconia and the police department in Leipzig.

Now the phase of evaluating the evidence begins.

In view of the complexity of the perpetrator structures of the "Milton Group", this could take some time, according to the ZCB statement.

The German criminal justice system impressively demonstrates that the investigations are not without consequences, even for key figures in the criminal structures.

Earlier this year, a criminal chamber at the Munich I Regional Court sentenced an accomplice of the internationally known cyber criminal “Wolf of Sofia” to six years and ten months in prison for commercial and gang fraud.

Just last week, another trial for investment fraud on the Internet began in Nuremberg.

In the case that the ZCB also brought to court, the damage to the gullible private investors is said to be 14 million euros.