Austrian Bitcoin ‘Scam’ Triggers Police Search Across Europe
- Interpol asked to find suspects in Denmark, Latvia, Germany
- Police got ‘hundreds’ of complaints from Austrian investors
A bitcoin logo sits on a LL 1800W power unit supplying cryptocurrency mining machine.
Photographer: Andrey Rudakov/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
Austrian authorities are asking Interpol to help track down suspects in an alleged Bitcoin scam that blew up last year and may have hit at least hundreds, maybe thousands of investors in the country and abroad.
Prosecutors in Vienna are consolidating “hundreds of complaints” about a scheme known as “Optioment” that have been filed at police stations across the country, in addition to files submitted by financial watchdog FMA, spokeswoman Christina Ratz said by telephone. Die Presse earlier reported that the total number of victims could exceed 10,000 and that as many as 12,000 Bitcoins ($115 million) may have been lost.