Eight of the members of the group that scammed some 2,500 young people in Spain, in what appeared to be a “crypto sect”, have already been arrested.
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Crypto scams are always acting in various ways. They almost always use strategies of deception and manipulation under the promise of making people millionaires overnight. As many of these strategies are already recognized, these criminal groups are looking for new ways. In Spain, one was discovered that affected at least 2,500 young people in the country, who were offered supposed courses that were nothing more than the beginning of a pyramid scheme, as published in the Spanish media.
El País last week agents of the police department of the Economic and Fiscal Crime Unit (UDEF) eight people were arrested as members of IM Mastey Academy, a company that allegedly scammed thousands of young people with virtual courses on cryptocurrencies and high-risk financial transactions, including some boys and girls under the age of 15 .
It is worth noting that the National Securities Market an area or arena, online or offline, in which commercial dealings are conducted. Commission (CNMV) had issued a warning in November 2020 that this “academy” was not authorised to provide services of a financial nature in the country.
According to media reports, the victims were recruited through social networks, such as Instagram, but also by approaching them directly in public places, such as parks. They also held mass events in hotels and other spaces where they were invited to join a movement that would allow them to forget about their working life and reach the “financial freedom”.
To do so, the police said in a press release, they were using “persuasion techniques typical of sectarian organisations”. .
Cults, which instead of religion, used money as a slogan.
Operation Woodworm
Account an account is essentially a whose purpose is to track the financial activities of a specific asset/ El País that the so-called Operation Woodworm The investigation – with which they dismantled the alleged scam a scheme that is designed to dupe people out of cash or crypto. – began in March of last year when police received a complaint from the Sectarian and Weakness Abuse Prevention Network a network refers to all nodes in the operation of a blockchain at any given moment in time. (RedUNE) which complained about the allegedly irregular activities of IM Mastery Academy.
This company had started in 2019 in Barcelona, but was already operating throughout Spain.
The police investigation found that IM Mastery Academy offered virtual courses to young people to learn how to invest investing is when you put money in a financial scheme with the intent of making a gain. in cryptocurrencies and other high-risk financial products, some of them not allowed in Spain and the EU, with the promise of being able to make huge profits without working.
The members of the project showed on social networks a life full of luxury, supposedly obtained thanks to the courses, in order to deceive young people more easily.
Dice El País que presunto líder de la trama, I. B. L., presumía en redes de ser el responsable de la captación directa o indirecta de más de 2.500 personas, aunque los investigadores no han podido concretar hasta ahora la cifra de afectados, que podrían ser muchos más.
Like a cult
According to media reports, the courses were, in reality, recorded virtual classes, with poor quality content, through which, among other high-risk financial practices, the buying and selling of binary options (products that allow investing in the rise or fall of currencies, commodities or stock indexes) and operations with leverage money that a trader borrows from a brokerage, enabling them to gain far greater exposure to a position than what their capital allows. (indebtedness) with cryptocurrencies were promoted.
What happened next was worse: once the young people paid the 200 euros registration fee and signed a commitment to pay another 150 euros a month, education was put on the back burner and the network began to pressure the victims to convince people in their family and school environment to enrol as well.
In fact, the organization trained them and told them how to recruit more victims. “This was the beginning of a pyramid scheme, since those who recruited two other people stopped paying the monthly fee. And if there were three and they managed to recruit other people, they began to charge the network, reports El País.
Taking advantage of naivety
The boys were very young, even minors, many with a basic level of education or with little financial training. “To some of them, the plot pressured them with techniques typical of cults so that they would devote themselves totally to the activity of recruiting new victims. . To this end, they urged them to abandon their studies and even to cut off their family relationships”, dice El País.
Police sources told the media that “In the deception phase, they tried to convince them not to say anything about what they were doing to more mature people, such as their parents, to prevent them from detecting the deception”.
For example, it says that two teenage girls recruited when they were 17 left their homes to live with members of the organization. In the complaint that triggered the investigation, two parents reported that their son had stopped eating and slept in a car for lack of money, “but the academy was always paid for.”
Hija de otra estafa
According to the investigations, IM Mastery Academy was the successor of another company, Imarketslive which had been warned by the CNMV. Previously, in 2018, the stock market authorities of the United Kingdom, France and Belgium had issued warnings.
Asimismo, se dice que el líder de este proyecto tenía contactos con los creadores de Awaken Dreamers (Soñadores Despiertos), un autodenominado “movimiento social de emprendedores” surgido en EE UU en la que supuestamente se inspiró para su estafa.
At the end of last year, the National Police of Spain reported that there was a wave of crypto scams in the country. It is important to be aware of the issue and recognize how many of these scams operate.
More data here:
- 5 Quick Tips to Detect Bitcoin the biggest and most popular cryptocurrency in the world. It is a decentralized digital currency that enables users to make trustless peer-to-peer transactions. Investment Scams and Fraudulent Schemes on the Internet
- Scams and cryptocurrencies: A practical guide to avoid fraud with digital digital technologies are these electronic tools that have the ability to generate, store or even process data. currencies.
- Known scams and frauds with Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies
- The Complete Guide to Bitcoin Scams
- How to identify a cryptocurrency cryptocurrencies are digital currencies that use cryptographic technologies to secure their operation. scam
Sources: El País , El Periódico , archivo
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