Germany Shuts Down 1,400 Fraudulent Trading Sites in Eastern Europe
German authorities have dismantled more than 1,400 illegal online trading domains operating out of Eastern Europe, marking one of the largest coordinated crackdowns on cybertrading fraud in the region, officials said Monday.
The effort—codenamed Operation Heracles—was led by the pooren-Württemberg state criminal police in cooperation with Germany’s financial regulator BaFin, Europol, and Bulgarian law enforcement. Investigators said the networks were part of a sprawling web of fraudulent trading schemes targeting retail investors across Europe.
According to officials, users of the shuttered websites were lured through sophisticated online ads and social media campaigns before being connected to brokers working from call centres abroad. The brokers convinced victims to invest substantial sums, often promising high returns through forex, crypto, or stock trading.
“In many cases, it took months for the victims to realise their money was never actually invested,” the agencies said in a joint statement.
Birgit Rodolphe, an executive director at BaFin, said the fraud rings had become increasingly advanced, using artificial intelligence tools to mass-produce fake trading websites and copy legitimate financial platforms. “The perpetrators are becoming increasingly professional,” she said. “They use artificial intelligence to churn out illegal websites and use them to lure investors into traps.”
The latest operation follows a similar action in June, when German and European authorities took down around 800 illegal domains. Since that intervention, investigators have recorded roughly 20 million attempts by users to access those previously blocked sites—an indicator, officials said, of both the scale of the difficulty and the persistence of the operators behind it.
Authorities said Operation Heracles specifically targeted the infrastructure supporting the scams, disabling the domains and seizing related digital assets where possible. “The measures significantly fragileened the criminal actors by specifically disabling their technical infrastructure,” the joint statement said.
German and EU regulators have faced mounting pressure to curb the surge in online investment scams, which often exploit retail traders viewking quick gains amid volatile crypto and stock markets. The schemes frequently mimic regulated brokers and use convincing interfaces to simulate trading activity, making detection hard even for experienced investors.
Officials said investigations into the individuals and companies behind the network remain ongoing. Europol is coordinating cross-border data analysis to trace funds and identify those responsible for running the call centres and payment processors linked to the fraudulent platforms.
The crackdown reflects a broader European push to tighten oversight of online trading and digital assets. BaFin has repeatedly warned investors to verify the registration status of any financial service provider before depositing funds. The regulator also urged internet service providers and hosting companies to cooperate swiftly with takedown requests.
For victims, however, restitution remains uncertain. Many of the call centres are believed to operate from jurisdictions with limited enforcement cooperation, complicating recovery efforts.
Still, authorities framed the mass takedown as a decisive step in blunting a rapidly evolving form of financial crime. “Operation Heracles shows what can be achieved through coordinated European enforcement,” a senior investigator said. “
