Meta, TikTok and Google are facing consumer complaints in Europe over financial scam advertisements. But the key question goes beyond platform compliance: if regulators impose fines, why should the money disappear into public budgets while the victims remain uncompensated? On 21 May 2026, BEUC, the European Consumer Organisation, together with
Modern Fraud Has Become Infrastructure Modern online fraud is no longer a collection of isolated scams. It has become infrastructure. Large-scale online investment fraud operates through networks of online advertising, social media manipulation, call centres, fake trading platforms, shell companies, payment service providers, acquiring banks, bank accounts, crypto ramps, nominee
ING’s new AML settlement and the same message ING Belgium has agreed to pay a €1.6 million criminal settlement in a money-laundering investigation linked to transactions involving Didier Reynders, the former Belgian minister and former EU Commissioner for Justice. According to reporting on the Brussels prosecutor’s announcement, the case concerned
For years, high-risk merchants, offshore gambling operators and unlicensed online investment platforms have used a simple workaround to access European payment rails: insert an EU-based company into the payment chain and call it a “payment agent”, “payment processing agent” or “collection agent.” The model became popular for obvious reasons.
The FTC’s message is clear: online fraud is growing, fast In its 25 March 2026 testimony, The Rising Scam Economy: Modernizing Federal Approaches to Protect Americans from Foreign Fraudsters, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission delivered a blunt warning to Congress: the scam economy is expanding. In 2025 alone, U.S. consumers submitted
Crypto coverage is already treating the Uniswap dismissal as another big win for the sector. That reaction is understandable, but it overreads the judgment. On 2 March 2026, Judge Katherine Polk Failla dismissed the Second Amended Complaint with prejudice in the class action Risley v. Universal Navigation Inc. Yet the
The Public Prosecutor’s Office in Bamberg has indicted Yehezkely Isaac, who was part of the management structure of Gal Barak’s call-centre operation between December 2016 and February 2019. Barak’s investment fraud schemes are alleged to have defrauded tens of thousands of European victims of approximately €200 million between September 2015
On 1 April 2025, the European Commission introduced ProtectEU, a significant new strategy aimed at enhancing security across the European Union. The initiative is designed to address rising threats, including terrorism, organised crime, cybercrime, and attacks on critical infrastructure. The strategy builds on previous efforts and integrates various tools and
On 11 September 2024, the 8th Global Conference on Criminal Finances and Cryptocurrencies, co-organised by the Basel Institute on Governance, Europol, and the UNODC, took place in Vienna. One of the primary topics of discussion was the increasingly concerning role of cryptocurrencies in the online gambling and casino industry. As
The United Nations has finalised a draft for a new cybercrime convention, marking the first multilateral anti-crime treaty in over 20 years and the first UN Convention against cybercrime. This draft, expected to be adopted by the General Assembly later this year, aims to become the first global legally binding
