Fraud trial in Linz

Millions raked in with worthless cryptocurrency

Six men have been on trial in Linz since Tuesday for serious fraud involving a worthless cryptocurrency. They are alleged to have defrauded hundreds of victims worldwide of almost six million euros with a professionally organized marketing campaign from 2017 to April 2018. The defendants are in custody and the court assumes that there are other as yet unknown accomplices.

The sextet allegedly deceived their victims into believing that they could make a quick buck with the "LoopX" token. According to the indictment, the promise to investors was that they had developed a trading software that would enable more than 10,000 trades per second and thus generate a profit of ten percent per week. The alleged fraudsters obtained the investors' money via crowdfunding. However, the trading software never existed and the tokens were worthless. The entire project had "never been operational at all", according to the public prosecutor's office.

Busted in Switzerland
The large-scale crypto fraud was uncovered in Switzerland in the canton of Zurich, where victims known by name had filed a complaint, a court spokeswoman said. Traces then also led to Linz. Cybercrime experts from the Federal Criminal Police Office were subsequently able to trace and analyze the course of the transactions. Further leads took the investigators through Austria, to Germany, the Czech Republic, Cyprus and Thailand.

"Operation LoopX " 
In October 2023, EU arrest warrants were issued as part of "Operation LoopX" in cooperation with the EU judicial authority Eurojust. An Austrian was arrested in Linz, another in Cyprus and a Czech in Prague. In the meantime, three more Austrians have been arrested in the greater Graz area and in Upper Austria. Some of the accused, aged between 29 and 40, have confessed to the facts. A verdict is planned for August 6. They face between one and ten years in prison.