Norway Charges Four for a$ 87 million crypto purchase scam

Norway has charged four men with involvement in a “large and extensive” investment fraud that collected NOK 963 million ($ 86.5 million ) from investors between March 2015 and November 2018.

The Norwegian National Authority for Investigation and Prosecution of Economic and Environmental Crime ( also known as kokrim ) alleged that the fraud was motivated by encouraging people to purchase “product packages” containing cryptocurrencies and shares as part of its indictment on Monday.

KOKrim claims to have proof that the accused community of people made no real opportunities and that their company had no revenue besides subjects ‘ payments.

We consider this to be a significant and substantial fraud, said Kokrim State Prosecutor Joakim Ziesler Berge in a media release. We are discussing a large number of patients who have lost their lives in many nations and considerable amount that have ended up with the accused.

Four Norway men in their 50s, 60s, and 70s are the defendants, three of whom are alleged to have supposedly gotten the investment income, and one more who is accused of having been involved in money trafficking.

The network laundered over NOK 700 million ($ 62.7 million ) of the scam’s proceeds through a Norwegian investment firm, with money also forwarded to linked accounts in various Asian countries.

Located in Sweden, Belgium, the Netherlands and China, their subjects sent money to alleged purchase cars with such brands as Crypto888 Club, Octa Partners and Nano Club.

These were all branding for the same alleged multi-level marketing (aka Ponzi ) scheme, with Octa Partners collapsing and rebooting as Nano Club, and then as Crypto888, and then later as Nano Crowd.

Each variation of the fraud even promised to pay regular results on its guaranteed revenue, beginning with OctaCoin and moving on to NanoCoin and Ormeus Coin.

One of the indicted people has been identified as Terje Hvidsten, a former skill seller who has previously been found guilty of fraud and who has been imprisoned since 2024 on suspicion of another major fraud, according to Norway paper DN.

Dag Htta ( previously Verner ) Eriksen, who has been convicted of corruption and fraud, is the other accused person.

The other two alleged perpetrators have not been named, although one has been described as a 52-year-old from Romerike ( a district north-east of Oslo ) and the other as a 70-year-old former lawyer, who helped launder the proceeds of the fraud.

The 52-year-old has denied legal duty, while the counsel for Hvisten has said that their customer objects to the indictment’s outline of him.

The four defendants are scheduled to appear in Oslo District Court for more than 60 days starting in September, but the two different defendants have chosen not to reply.

” The situation demonstrates that organized crime in the form of money laundering and forgery across borders will be investigated and prosecuted,” said Joakim Ziesler Berge, “even if the subjects of the violence are in nations other than Norway.”

” A growing problem”

Økokrim furthermore mentions in its assertion that purchase fraud “is a growing concern in Norway and internationally”, with experts in scam echoing this information.

According to Sarah Twohig, a regulatory disputes lawyer at the foreign legislation company Pinsent Masons, “investment fraud involving cryptocurrencies is becoming more prevalent in Europe and around the world.”

According to Twohig, the most recent Chainalysis Crypto Crime Report found that all crypto scams that involve high yield investments and “pig butchering” scams received at least$ 9.9 billion in on-chain value in 2024.

Additionally, Twohig acknowledged that digital assets offer some advantages to would-be fraudsters despite the fact that they also account for “only a small share of the judicial economy.”

She continued,” Criminals frequently use the decentralized and anonymous nature of cryptocurrencies to carry out and suppress fraudulent activities more quickly. Regulations and law enforcement are now unable to track down and restore money due to this.

Regulators are starting to catch up, with the EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MCA ) aimed at reducing the risk of increasing fraud by imposing stringent standards on crypto-asset service providers.

The EU’s fresh AML deal is technology-neutral, making it impossible for the proceeds from crypto crime to be used to launder money or funnel money to terrorists, according to Twohig. Investors and businesses operating in the crypto room will be protected legally by this.