A gang lured people across Germany into investing more than €1 million ($1.14 million) in bogus financial products online, prosecutors at the Baden-Württemberg cybercrime centre said on Wednesday, announcing charges against an alleged gang member – a 61-year-old woman from Sweden.
She faces charges of aiding and abetting gang-based and commercial fraud in five cases. The 24 victims come from the states of Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria, Hesse, Lower Saxony, North Rhine-Westphalia, Thuringia and Schleswig-Holstein.
According to the authority, several individuals are suspected of having joined forces no later than 2018 to carry out online trading fraud.
To do so, they operated professionally designed internet platforms offering supposed investment opportunities in financial products and derivatives.
To further deceive those who invested money, fictitious trading was simulated, and purported profits were displayed in users’ accounts. No payouts were ever made. The gang instead kept the money for itself, the authority said. In total, €1.17 million was paid in.
A large number of company accounts were set up in Germany and abroad to handle the flow of funds.
The Swedish woman is alleged to have “substantially assisted” the gang in setting up the corporate structures and accounts, the cybercrime centre said. Between 2021 and 2023, she is alleged to have acted as a formal managing director or authorized signatory. For her role, she is said to have received payments of around €100,000 over several years.
The woman was extradited from Sweden to Germany in March, the authority said. She has been in pre-trial detention since then. The Mannheim regional court must now decide whether to admit the charges. The authority initially declined to comment on the suspect’s nationality.
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