From the Organized Crime and Corruption Project, November 9:
Bank accounts in more than 20 European countries have been frozen as part of a multi-country investigation targeting online investment schemes in EU member states, Georgia and Ukraine, Eurojust said Tuesday.
Eurojust, the European Union’s criminal justice cooperation agency, coordinated the investigation in which investors lost millions of euros.
The probe was requested by the Swiss authorities after the Bern Cantonal Police identified a group perpetrating the online investment scams, also known as boiler room scams.
According to Eurojust and the Bern Police, the investigation began in October 2019 when a victim filed a complaint with Swiss authorities. It identified bogus call centers and websites of alleged financial trading firms in Ukraine and Georgia.
Although the investigation was temporarily halted owing to the war in Ukraine, targeted operations were carried out in 23 countries by the end of 2022, resulting in searches and the freezing of assets and bank accounts.
Most victims were Swiss and German investors lured by more than 100 fake websites appearing to be professional investment companies providing financial transactions in cryptocurrencies and trading options.
According to Eurojust, potential investors who expressed interest were solicited over the phone and persuaded to invest large sums that were ultimately lost....
....MUCH MORE
Some previous excursions to the dark side:
‘Boiler Room’ Salesman Lied to Investors
I should hope so.
Otherwise the investors were really, really dumb....
Quick, Do We Have Anything Outstanding With Wallberg Dillion Reid?
"Feds Raid Bonanno Family Boiler Room"
A blast to/from the past.*
...Going through the indictments and subsequent trial transcripts was such fun.
The nicknames and even the A.K.A's were hilarious: "Alan Benlolo aka Allen Bender aka Haime Escalante" etc.
"Guy Whose Life Of Crime Was Memorialized In Leonardo DiCaprio Flick Not Yet Done With Life Of Crime "
Bess at DealBreaker in top form:
No, not Jordan Belfort, who claims to be on the straight and narrow. We’re talking about his number 2 at boiler room Stratton Oakmont, Danny Porush. For those who need a quick refresher, he’s the one played by Jonah Hill, who felt the need to make a number of clarifications about his portrayal shortly before the movie came out, which included but were not limited to:
Anyway, he may be in trouble with the law again.
- Copping to threatening to eat an employee’s goldfish, but insisting he never let a chimpanzee run around the office
- Admitting to hiring “little people to attend and mingle at at least one party” but never “abusing or throwing the midgets”
- Harshly denying he ever had a male/male/female threesome, saying “I’m not homophobic, but I never had sex with a girl with another guy. I’ve been with a zillion women, several women at the same time—but only just with women…Also, never any minors.”
U.S. FBI agents on Wednesday raided the offices of Med-Care Diabetic & Medical Supplies Inc, a Florida medical device company...MORE
Once you read "Florida medical device
company" you can pretty much add "Medicare fraud" with around 90% probability of being accurate.
Great Opening Lines: In the Boiler Room With Lincoln Edition
From IP&E:
"A somewhat dubious bond salesman once said to me: 'You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time and that’s the market I am going for!'”....That's from Joseph Mariathasan's January 2 Investment & Pensions Europe article "Why crypto-currencies won't stay the course" which continues:
Blockchain technology may well be a super way of undertaking many types of transaction processing in a more efficient manner than current software technology allows. The question, justifiably perhaps for most people should be, so what? It may well significantly reduce transaction costs for share dealing and other activity, but is this going to represent a game changer in any sense?
It is difficult to see why this should be the case. For long term institutional investors, as against high frequency traders, transaction costs are important, but not necessarily the critical issue when it comes to investment....MORE
