Operation Endgame

Robust international actions against illicit virtual currency exchanges

Operation Endgame continues taking actions to disrupt the cybercriminal ecosystem. In the last week, multiple cryptocurrency exchanges were taken offline by international law enforcement agencies and judicial authorities. These service providers facilitated many different criminal financial flows, such as ransomware.

Money laundering facilitates all kinds of serious crime and enables criminals to stay out of reach of investigative authorities. Service providers have an obligation to investigate whether money may have a criminal origin. Knowingly accepting cryptocurrencies derived from crime and thus facilitating money laundering is always punishable by law.

Several botnets dismantled in largest international operation

During a joint action by international law enforcement agencies and judicial authorities several botnets that played a key role in cybercrime were dismantled. Four arrests were made and sixteen premises were searched worldwide over the past few days. Additionally, eight summons were served against suspects. Many national and international organisations in the public and private sectors also played an important role in this operation.

The operation enabled us to simultaneously take down these botnets and disrupt the infrastructure used by cybercriminals. Botnets are used for different types of cybercrime, for example ransomware. The dismantled botnets consisted of millions of infected computer systems.

Many of the victims were not aware of the infection of their systems. The estimated financial loss these criminals have caused to companies and government institutions amounts to hundreds of millions of euros.

This large-scale action is called Operation Endgame.

Operation Endgame does not end today. New actions will be announced on this website.

If you have information about the suspects in Operation Endgame, feel free to contact us