Police have arrested an alleged cryptocurrency fraudster who’s suspected of swindling his victims out of greater than €500,000 (£421,000) whereas dwelling a lifetime of luxurious on the Costa del Sol, staying in unique inns and villas, consuming in costly eating places and shopping for designer garments.
The Guardia Civil power described the Latvian man, who had been sought by Interpol since 2015, as “one of many greatest cryptocurrency con artists primarily based in Spain”.
He was arrested in Latvia final week after an operation by the Guardia Civil’s cybercrime division and its central operational unit.
The power mentioned that greater than 1,000 individuals had fallen sufferer to the alleged rip-off, through which traders in a brand new digital foreign money often called “Hodlife, the Unicorn Token”, had been promised a share of the commissions charged on transactions utilizing the digital cash.
The Guardia Civil mentioned: “To unfold phrase concerning the undertaking, the arrested man used the commonest digital communication channels to stage aggressive publicity campaigns on Twitter, Telegram and on a bespoke webpage.
“He in a short time amassed a big neighborhood of customers who, because of the messages despatched from these platforms, had been duped into depositing their cryptocurrencies within the new enterprise.”
To look much more convincing {and professional}, the alleged scammer additionally employed an actor to seem in promotional movies posing because the foreign money’s creator.
On the finish of June, nevertheless, Hodlife traders found their cash had disappeared and realised they’d been conned. The “rug pull” – or cut-and-run – led the Guardia Civil to open an investigation.
Their inquiries led them to wallets linked to a 29-year-old Lithuanian man who had spent lengthy stretches of time in Spain since 2020. By analysing the completely different web connections used within the rip-off, police established that the alleged conman had been working from one of the unique areas of the Costa del Sol.
“Officers on the path of the suspect uncovered the high-end way of life loved by each him and his accomplices,” the assertion mentioned. “They lived in luxurious villas that price greater than €1,000 a day to lease, they employed top-of-the-range vehicles, they usually spent monumental sums of cash in designer garments outlets and within the Costa del Sol’s best eating places.”
Evaluation of the completely different web connections utilized by the gang additionally revealed that it alternated between villas and inns, utilizing the web there to entry completely different cryptocurrency websites and to switch the stolen funds to their very own wallets.
Ultimately, officers realised that the alleged scammer had been utilizing false paperwork for years and was in actual fact Latvian and never Lithuanian.
The assertion continued: “As soon as his id had been established past doubt, the Guardia Civil activated all of the related mechanisms of worldwide police cooperation and picked up the fraudster’s path via completely different nations as he employed vehicles and mansions and obtained bank cards and financial institution accounts with false paperwork.”
Officers additionally found that the US had issued a search, arrest and extradition warrant for the suspect in 2015 in reference to alleged fraud.
A spokesman for the Guardia Civil mentioned investigations had been ongoing, including it was unclear what prices the person might face and through which jurisdictions.
