Cyprus court wants Israeli couple’s safe boxes opened in €700M crypto probe

The Supreme Court of Cyprus has ruled against an Israeli couple who tried to stop police from opening their safe deposit boxes as part of an investigation into a €700 million ($834 million) crypto laundering ring.

Law enforcement agency Europol shared last October that it had successfully dismantled the laundering network with the help of authorities in France, Germany, Cyprus, Spain, Malta, Israel, Bulgaria, and Belgium.

Days prior, a Limassol court issued a warrant to search the couple’s safe deposit boxes, but they refused to give up the keys. Cypriot media reports that the couple had tried to argue that nothing in the boxes was linked to the laundering ring.

The two tried to quash the court’s decision by filing a writ of certiorari (an order issued by a higher court to a lower court, demanding a record of the case for review).

However, Judge Elena Efraim dismissed the claims on the basis that around $20,000 worth of crypto directly linked to the laundering network was received by one of the applicants in 2021.

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The applicant and his family ran a trust that acquired property and had also received a sum of $3 million in his account. The ring itself relied on various shell companies across the globe to funnel the funds into salaries, property, or other entities.

As such, the court said, “This evidence reasonably gives rise to a suspicion that the applicant participated in the overall scheme, since cryptocurrencies derived from the fraudulent investment websites ended up in his account and a fairly large sum of money was moved through that account.”

The warrant seeks to obtain smartphones, tablets, or any “high-tech internet equipment.”

Major crypto scam laundering operation

The entire network was laundering money obtained from crypto scams including fake crypto investment platforms promising high returns. In this instance, scammers call up the victims and claim they’ve made substantial profits before pressuring them to send them even more money.

In November, France announced that it had simultaneously arrested nine individuals across Cyprus, Spain, and Germany, as a result of the crypto laundering investigation.

It’s worth noting that conflicting reports put the scam networks’ overall sum of illicit proceeds at either €700 million or $700 million.

It’s a problem that extends beyond Europe to Southeast Asia, as crypto fraud rings that rely on trafficked victims are also being dismantled by authorities.

Last month, China executed the heads of a number of family-run criminal organisations responsible for running crypto scam compounds. Cambodia has also been actively trying to shut down such enterprises.

Read more: Cambodian scam rings facing disruption since kingpin’s arrest

Unfortunately, in some cases, these scam compounds have their own ties to the police and are often tipped off about the raid, or even stage their own fake arrests.