An investor from Bulgaria lost a huge amount of money to fraudsters, believing that he was making investments in cryptocurrency.
A call center was used for running the scam, which is become a very popular scheme for exploiting money from victims who are attracted by the promise of high and quick profits on crypto and stock markets.
| Name | Price | 24H (%) |
|---|---|---|
 Bitcoin(BTC) | $88,977.00 | 0.76% |
 Ethereum(ETH) | $3,036.93 | -2.21% |
 Dogecoin(DOGE) | $0.359530 | -8.21% |
 Cardano(ADA) | $0.66 | 18.97% |
 Polygon(MATIC) | $0.360383 | -1.21% |
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Bulgarian investor
BNT, the Bulgarian national broadcaster, published a report revealing that a Bulgarian businessman had become the latest victim of a crypto scam.
He had transferred a sum of 1 million leva, which is around $500,000, as scammers promised him that he could make profits from crypto assets.
A fake consultant persuaded the investor to send the money to accounts that belonged to various banks, ranging from Hong Kong to Europe.
A call center had initially reached out to the businessman, which was being operated by the fraudsters, and they promised him high returns on crypto investments.
They continued to communicate with him for some time and were able to convince him that his investment would be tripled very quickly.
Once he showed some interest in the proposed deal, he had been transferred to an encrypted chat and an online account was set up for him.
The scam
The head of the cybercrime unit, Commissioner Vladimir Dimitrov said that they likely obtained the details of the victim, including his name and phone number, from some platform he had signed up on.
The investigators did not reveal the identity of the businessman. He had been offered to start with a deposit of €250.
Once had made the deposit, he saw his investment multiply in virtual assets several times over a few weeks’ time.
This prompted him into sending tens of thousands of euros to a Chinese, British, and Polish bank.
Other details
According to Bulgarian officials, the call center that made the initial call to the targeted person was probably based somewhere in the Middle East.
However, they had not yet been able to identify the country from where the organizers of the scam scheme had been operating from.
Europe has recently seen a criminal trend in which such scams that use call centers have become increasingly common.
They entice victims with investment opportunities in cryptocurrencies or renowned global companies that are obviously non-existent.
Last month, Eurojust and Europol worked with the authorities of several countries in Europe, including Germany, Cyprus, Serbia, and Bulgaria.
They had worked together for bringing down a network of call centers that had been running fake crypto schemes and were luring people into investing in them.
Last year in September, a similar criminal organization had been taken down by the Ukrainian police, which had been defrauding people all across Europe in a similar manner.
Even though people are quite familiar with these scams, the people behind them are very convincing and they know just who to target.
They are able to obtain information on the victim beforehand and use advanced tactics to convince them into investing their money.
