Dual citizenship-holding French and Israeli perps were caught after taking illegal advantage of the French government’s pandemic aid that saw all affected businesses receiving immediate compensation. The group of fraudsters took advantage of this government-led initiative, and especially the lack of regulations around the case-by-case examination.
What followed was a complete devastation in the form of a massive fraudulent scheme, involving stolen identities, that scammed the French social services, by stealing million of unemployment benefits that were later laundered by both crypto and Israeli channels.
Soon the French authorities became aware of the situation but by then, even after arrests were made, a big portion of the stolen funds still remained untraced. Europol, the Israelis, and the French joined to tackle this criminal case, which allegedly used mostly cryptocurrencies to launder its gains.
Local reports reveal that a total of three arrests were made, with the main suspect being one Alexander Verlin from Haifa. The second arrest was a woman; both suspects deny any of the accusations. A third arrest was that of a man during his engagement day in Jerusalem.
For now the joint task has not commented on how they traced the crypto assets to the laundering activities.
Meanwhile, the country of France is no stranger to crypto scams, as some 25 percent of all investment scams are based on some form of crypto manipulation.
