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The investigation is being conducted by the Vilnius County Police Chief Commissariat. During the investigation, officials in the capital were assisted by the Lithuanian Criminal Police Office and the Financial Crimes Investigation Service. Europol and Eurojust contributed to the arrest and registration of the suspects.
At the press conference on Thursday, Vilnius County Police Chief Saulius Gagas announced that the investigation began in February, when a report on suspicious financial transactions involving three Lithuanian-registered companies was received from a bank. operating in Lithuania.
Officials quickly learned of the deposit fraud scheme. She, according to S. Gago, is innovative. In this case, it is not the scammers who are looking for the victims, but the victims themselves who find them.
A group of Lithuanian citizens have created online deposit platforms that offer attractive investment terms. This platform was of interest to the German academic community (someone saw tempting suggestions and told friends and colleagues about it). German teachers, doctors of science, etc. tempted to invest his savings.
After discovering the offer that interested them, the people themselves initiated the deposit, filling out the requests and sending them by email. by post and received responses with offers and information on the individual accounts opened for them to which they had to transfer the amount of the selected deposit. The specified accounts, which allegedly belonged to the depositors, actually belonged to those Lithuanian companies.
Depositors’ surveillance was put to sleep: people thought that money was in accounts opened in their name and a return on investment was promised with a profit after six months or even three years.
Depositors entered into an investment services contract with a UK based company. Almost all the funds received were transferred to companies in Greece, Hungary, Turkey, Ireland and Spain. Part of the proceeds were collected at ATMs in Sweden.
There are currently 38 victims from the German academic community in the case (the number of victims may increase during the investigation). The scammers attracted around one and a half million euros from these people.
March 4-12 The international police operation Pulpo was carried out. During it, 26 searches were carried out in Lithuania and abroad, and five Lithuanian citizens were arrested (one of them was arrested in Sweden, others in Lithuania).
Three suspects arrested: in Sweden, the detainee will be transferred to Lithuania under a European arrest warrant, another suspect is arrested for three months and a third for a month. For others, milder preventive detention measures: promise not to leave, police search, etc.
According to Arūnas Stankevičius, Chief Prosecutor of the Second Prosecution Division of the Vilnius Regional Prosecutor’s Office, these people are not involved in organized crime. Only two of them have been convicted before: one convicted in Sweden for fraudulent accounting, the other convicted in Lithuania for driving when drunkenness exceeds one and a half per thousand.
The head of the suspects was born in 1951 and the youngest in 1978. They have been suspected of fraud and money laundering.
Officials managed to find and freeze most of the money stolen from banks. More than 500 thousand shares were frozen in Lithuanian banks. More than € 700,000 were frozen in accounts in Greece, Hungary and Spain. euros.
Police warn people who are considering choosing one or another investment or deposit platform: “We urge you to be very careful not to be tempted by the offers and services provided. There is no need to rush into a decision, and before deciding to invest or make a deposit, you should carefully assess your financial capabilities, the potential risks of investing and deposit-taking activities, and take a close look at the financial instruments offered. “
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