Dutch Police Arrest Three in Pump-and-Dump Scheme Involving Self-Made Cryptocurrency

Dutch police arrested three men in the industrial town of Deventer for attempting to defraud investors by selling them a self-made cryptocurrency and then intentionally sinking its price.

• The police charged the men with fraud and embezzlement, and did not rule out additional arrests.
• Police arrested one of the men at a Deventer warehouse that held several computers used for mining cryptocurrency, and that there “was also an issue of electricity theft,” according to a press release posted on the website of the National Dutch Police.
• The arrests stemmed from an investigation of the cryptocurrency exchange Coinhouse.eu, which authorities have suspected of embezzling customers’ money and defrauding them.
• In what authorities described as a pump-and-dump scheme, one of the men, a 39-year-old, produced the cryptocurrency and advertised it on a cryptocurrency platform and Twitter, luring investors and boosting the price. He then sold a large volume of digital coins over a short time frame, rendering them “worthless.”
• The 39-year-old man is also suspected of similarly trying to scam investors using ERSO, MALC, EUROP and TulipMania digital currencies, the press release said.
• During the investigation, police seized a house, vehicles, computers and cryptocurrencies.