€100 million online trading scam busted in EU

[mlawson71]

A successful operation of the low enforcement authorities in Austria, Germany, the Czech Republic and Bulgaria has led to the arrests of several people, among which the Izraeli citizen Gal Barak, who is accused of running an online trading scam ring that has stolen over 100 million Euro form retail investors across Europe in 2018 alone.

Barak was arrested in Sofia earlier this month and awaits deportation to Austria, where he is expected to stand trial.

The organization run by Barak operated a number of fake online cryptocurrency, forex and binary options brokers, among which XtraderFX, Optionstars, OptionstarsGlobal, Golden Markets, SafeMarkets, Cryptopoint, 60op.com, Trade.com, Optionbit and option888.

According to the initial information, these websites have accumulated at least 66 million Euro from investors mainly across Europe, of which about 11 million Euro from retail traders in Germany and Austria. However, still not all data has been processed, and investigators expect the final count to be times bigger.

Source