The Mossos and the Guardia Civil are dismantling a network in Albania that is accused of defrauding 17,000 people.
Police in Dubai have arrested one of the suspected international leaders of the fake broker macro scam, which operates across Europe and has around 17,000 potential victims in Spain. The person arrested is Amant Josifi, who was arrested on September 6 and whom the Mossos and the Guardia Civil defined as a “high value” target. Josifi is the owner of several of the call centers registered in Albania a year ago, which police suspect victims of the network in the peninsula called to offer bogus investments. The court issued an international arrest warrant against him, including for the offenses of criminal organization and fraud. Josifi is free, as confirmed by his lawyer, who says he has been living in the country for three years. Police failed to arrest him in Albania as part of the major international operation they carried out in November last year, which involved several countries.
Josifi is a well-known businessman in Albania with strong political ties. His arrest triggered an earthquake in the European country where he served as an adviser to the Defense Ministry between 2018 and 2020. One of his lawyers in Spain claimed to this newspaper that Josifi was just a businessman, that he had hired the call centers and that he did not know what kind of activities were carried out there. Despite this, Josifi did not appear before the authorities who were looking for him. His attorney requested his appearance in the case and the opportunity to testify via video conference. According to judicial sources, the arrest was made via Interpol. Josifi is at large without any precautions and is waiting for the court in La Seu to present the extradition request.
The Mossos d’Esquadra and the Guardia Civil have been investigating, from a small court in La Seu d’Urgell in Lleida, an international macro fraud for more than four years, mired in a jumble of websites, domains, platforms and names behind frauds involving thousands People with offers to invest in foreign exchange markets, cryptocurrencies, commodities and other financial products. As a result of this work, the Catalan police developed a search engine with 470 supposedly fraudulent websites. From the first complaint of an elderly woman who was cheated out of 800,000 euros, an international team was put together, including other countries such as Germany, Italy, Georgia and Albania. Police claim the network made around €2.4 billion from “hundreds of thousands” of victims around the world.
The investigation of the case has uncovered the operation of hot centers, open 24 hours a day, where dozens of people pretend to be fake brokers and are dedicated to ruthlessly defrauding citizens from all over the world. The victims believed they were investing in high-profit financial products and cryptocurrencies, but in reality the money went directly into the criminal organization’s pockets, the investigation says. Police allege that one of the brands they operated under was EverFX, which sponsored Sevilla Fútbol Club. “One of the top managers of the EverFx platform” during the investigation, Pablo AM, 33, was arrested by the Mossos in December last year when the plane on which he was traveling from Romania landed at El Prat airport in Llobregat.
The investigation ignored the fake brokers because it was difficult to combine the different laws of each country. Police have focused all their efforts on beheading those they believe to be key in the criminal network. In Josifi’s case, they put him in charge of the department dedicated to defrauding Spanish citizens, whose epicenter was in Albania. Police simultaneously intervened in call centers spread across several countries, including Georgia, North Macedonia, Bulgaria and Ukraine.
You can follow EL PAÍS Catalunya on Facebook and Twitteror sign up here to receive our weekly newsletter
What influences the most is what happens next. So you don’t miss anything, subscribe.
Subscribe to