THThe Hague Cybercrime CentrePrivate advisory · The Hague

Department 02 of 06

Financial and Investment Fraud Department

Reviews of fraudulent brokers, fictitious investment platforms, crypto schemes, pyramids, and social engineering.

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The Department reviews reports involving fraudulent brokers, fictitious investment platforms, cryptocurrency schemes, financial pyramids, and social engineering.

Cases We Review

  1. fraudulent investment and trading platforms;
  2. cloned websites impersonating banks, exchanges, or regulated companies;
  3. schemes promising guaranteed returns;
  4. manipulation by telephone, messaging applications, and social media;
  5. misuse of AnyDesk, TeamViewer, and other remote-access applications;
  6. demands for fictitious taxes, insurance payments, commissions, or “withdrawal activation” fees;
  7. fraud committed under the pretext of recovering previously lost funds.

Case Review Procedure

  1. 1The application is registered and assigned a unique case reference number.
  2. 2Information about the platform, domain, representatives, and communication channels is recorded.
  3. 3Corporate registrations, licences, regulatory warnings, and indicators of website impersonation are reviewed.
  4. 4A payment timeline is prepared and the total reported loss is calculated.
  5. 5Correspondence, agreements, receipts, call records, and technical information are preserved.
  6. 6The banks, payment providers, cryptocurrency exchanges, and jurisdictions involved in the movement of funds are identified.
  7. 7An evidence package is prepared for submission to a bank, exchange, legal representative, or competent authority.

Situation in Europe: 2025–2026

There is currently no single official dataset showing the full scale of cryptocurrency fraud across all European countries. National authorities use different definitions and reporting systems, while a single case may simultaneously be classified as fraud, cybercrime, and money laundering.

PeriodConfirmed indicators
2025Eurojust handled almost 14,000 cross-border criminal cases. The figures included 2,909 ongoing and 1,894 new fraud cases; 1,587 ongoing and 808 new money-laundering cases; and 481 ongoing and 280 new cybercrime cases. These categories may overlap and should not be added together.
2025Eurojust organised 653 coordination meetings and supported 412 Joint Investigation Teams. Cases handled by the Agency involved at least 3.1 million victims across all crime categories.
2025In one major operation in Spain, authorities disrupted a cryptocurrency investment fraud network suspected of laundering approximately EUR 460 million. Five individuals were arrested, and the investigation received support from partners in several countries.
2025 — published EEA dataA joint EBA–ECB report published in December 2025 recorded EUR 4.2 billion in payment fraud across the European Economic Area during 2024. This figure covers payment fraud generally and is not limited to crypto-asset transactions.
2026 — as of 11 SeptemberConsolidated Europe-wide statistics for 2026 have not yet been published. Only individual operational results and data from national authorities are currently available.
2026In one international operation, authorities dismantled a cryptocurrency service suspected of laundering more than EUR 336 million between 2022 and 2025. Reports indicated that 25 domains were taken offline, more than 30 servers were seized, and two suspected administrators were arrested.
2026During a phase of Operation Endgame, authorities neutralised 326 servers and 142 domains and seized more than EUR 41 million in crypto-assets. These figures relate to one international operation and do not represent the total scale of cryptocurrency crime in Europe.
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