Eighteen people have been arrested in a crackdown on three international credit card fraud and money laundering rings, German authorities have said.
The networks made fraudulent charges for online subscriptions at bogus websites, causing more than €300 million in damages, according to Germany's Federal Criminal Police (BKA) and public prosecutors in the western German city of Koblenz.
Some employees at four major German payment providers are accused of collaborating with the fraud rings to facilitate the illegal transactions, "thereby compromising a portion of the German financial system," Koblenz prosecutor Harald Kruse told reporters.
The phony websites were professionally designed to appear as pornography, video streaming and dating services, with 19 million subscriptions created.
Fraudulent charges were made on about 4.3 million bank cards from 193 different countries, authorities said.
"I've just been told that North Korea is among these countries," Mr Kruse said to underscore the scope of the fraud. "I didn't even know they had credit cards there, I must honestly admit."
The investigation focused on "44 suspects from Germany, the United Kingdom, Latvia, the Netherlands, Denmark, Austria, the United States, and Canada, aged between 32 and 74," according to Mr Kruse.
A total of 18 people were arrested, including five in Germany.
Police conducted raids yesterday in Germany, Italy, Canada, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Singapore, Spain, the United States and Cyprus as part of what has been dubbed "Operation Chargeback".
The criminal networks used phishing attacks or data leaks to steal bank and credit card details from people between 2016 and 2021, BKA Vice President Martina Link said.
She said that hundreds of shell companies - most registered in the UK or Cyprus - were used to handle the fraudulent websites and ill-gained revenue.
"In total, approximately 2,000 fake websites were identified during the investigation," Ms Link said.
The deliberately small and obscurely labelled amounts allowed the fraudsters to conceal the withdrawals.
The suspects managed to launder about 150 million euros through scores of bank accounts in Germany, Ms Link said.
German investigators worked with authorities in nine other countries, including the United Kingdom, Singapore, and the United States.
