German, Bulgarian, Austrian, and Serbian authorities have been working together in a joint operation to investigate and counteract a binary options trading scam. It is estimated that the scam has stolen around €80 million from users, many of which have not even filed for complaint.

The investigation into this fraud is being led by German Prosecutor’s General Office in the city of Bamberg. The investigation was launched almost a year ago.

In Bulgaria, three locals and one German citizen have been detained. It is thought that two of these are among the minds behind the scam. In Serbia, five more individuals connected to the scheme have been arrested, and 30 plus accounts from numerous banks are examined in connection to the ploy. The result is seized cash and a blocked €2.5 million bank account in Germany.

The investigation has called the help of the Austrian Central Prosecutor’s Office against corruption and economic crime, as well as Europol and Eurojust. All agencies had been exchanging info in between them and other authorities.

The just of the scam is nothing that we haven’t explained before. The scammers gather contact info from various phishing ads, after which they reach out to every single person prompting them to register on an illicit binary option trading terminal for a small initial €250 deposit.

Those that invested were quickly getting calls from the so called retainer agents and/or alleged personal brokers. The call were coming from illegal call centres in Sofia and Belgrade. To deepen the involvement of investors, and thus convince him or her to deposit more money, each users was issued a fake app that tracked their money. While this misleading application was ensuring that users were held in place, their actual money were being transferred to offshore accounts all over the world.

We at DepositWithdraw want to, again, warn you against depositing with brokers and individuals that are not regulated by proper financial overseers!