The professionalism of today’s cybercriminal organizations (in short: the scammers’ industry) correspond to the professionalism and procedures of legitimate big international corporations. Technology, development activities, human resources, accounting, finance, marketing, legal departments are carried out by different departments independently under the professional leadership of the management people hired by criminals.
Our research shows that Postbank Germany (a subsidiary of Deutsche Bank) was definitely “the bank to go” for scammers in 2016 – 2020 to open bank accounts for shell companies. We collected the data of more than 90 shell companies with bank accounts with different Postbank branches all over Germany.
As we have seen so often in the past years, the European authorities have been mainly concerned with protecting the interests of the business users in drafting the Digital Markets Act (DMA) and have forgotten about the so much-needed consumer protection. It is about time to enhance consumer protection in
The 1st Criminal Division in Bamberg, Germany, has submitted a request for a ruling to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) for the next steps in the Gal BARAK case on June 4, 2021. The pending ruling of the ECJ will not only be important in the criminal case of
Out of about 1.100 victims registered with EFRI, more than 620 (about 57%) victims told us that they got lured into investments scams by fake or misleading ads on social media platforms like Facebook or Instagram. These findings correlate with the British Action Fraud findings from the report dated end
As of January 21, 2021, UNZER (formerly Heidelpay) announced its acquisition of two Danish payment companies: Clearhaus A/S, an acquiring company (payment institution supervised by the Danish FSA and QuickPay in Aarhus in Denmark – subject to the approval of the relevant supervisory authorities. EFRI represents 77 victims who have deposited their life
It became a modern trend in the financial sector that each organization likes to provide sophisticated wordings about the importance of sustainable finance and the application of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) criteria in their day-to-day business and asset allocation. Above all big banks and financial institutions heavily publish about
EFRI, an association based in Vienna, Austria, set up in spring 2020, by now represents more than 1,052 European consumers who were defrauded by cybercriminals. As of writing the victims lost over EUR 59.2 million in the form of investment scams also referred to as boiler room scams. HSBC, one
In preparing the civil legal claims against PAYVISION B.V., we dig deeply into the criminal files for Option888 and the Wolf of Sofia. We learn a lot about how these fraudulent schemes work. In addition, we also know a lot about the enablers of these enormous fraudulent activities. Unscrupulous regulated
For more than two years, we have been delivering information about bank accounts of Deutsche Handelsbank used for scamming people to the German authorities. When we were working on the #Wirecard money laundering complaint (back in January 2020), it was evident that some of the scammers used both Wirecard and Deutsche
EFRI is the abbreviation for European Funds Recovery Initiative. The legal entity behind this Initiative is a not-for-profit organisation (EFRI-Association) registered in Vienna, Austria. Here you can read the statutes of the not-for-profit organization. Read More
