Polish police announced on Monday that they have arrested 11 people in connection with a foreign exchange brokerage scam. According to InfoSecurity 24, the individuals that were detained worked alongside other scammers operating from Cyprus. Police raided the offices of the broker last week and confiscated documents, computers and data carriers. The 11 people detained were apparently senior management figures, responsible for organizing business operations and giving orders to subordinates who had direct contact with clients. Though 11 people have been detained, police said they believed 45 individuals were responsible for running the criminal enterprise. It is unclear whether those 45 individuals are all based in Poland or if they are in Cyprus too.
Run of the mill scam
In their statement, Polish police said that the scammers are thought to have conned retail investors out of 2 million zloty ($520,000). Police appear to have recovered some of that money during the raid. The scam seems to have worked in exactly the same way almost every Retail Trading fraud ever has worked. The hucksters in Poland would cold call people, promising them high returns if they invested in their products. If they did hand over their cash, the fraudsters would make it seem like they were making a lot of money and try to get them to deposit more. Once the victim started asking to withdraw their cash or refused to put any more money into the scheme, the fraudsters would cut off all contact with them. This is not the first time Polish police have caught fraudulent foreign Exchange brokers from operating inside the eastern European nation. Back in November, police managed to stop an operation that was thought to have conned investors out of 18 million zloty ($4.70 million).
