The London Metropolitan Police have arrested five men in connection with a cryptocurrency investment scam that detectives say used fake online trading platforms to lure in potentially thousands of victims worldwide.
“These websites are highly convincing and use professional-looking content, fake endorsements and aggressive marketing tactics to lure people in,” said Detective Sergeant Stephen Bourne of the Metropolitan Police Service in a statement on Thursday.
The suspects, aged between 21 and 37, were detained on Oct. 1 by the Met's economic crime team on suspicion of conspiracy to commit fraud. They have since been released on bail pending further investigation.
Police said they believe victims may have lost more than $1.3 million (£1 million) in total. The suspects are accused of running a "boiler room" operation out of London that made follow-up calls to pressure victims into investing more money in digital tokens that, investigators allege, were never intended to be listed on legitimate exchanges.
Tackling scams continues to be an uphill battle for law enforcement in the UK and beyond.
In September 2025 alone, almost 50,000 calls and 9,000 web chats were received by the UK's national fraud helpline Action Fraud. So far this year, Action Fraud has received 308,000 reports of fraud representing more than $3.3 billion (£2.6 billion) in losses. Of these, 25,000 reports were classified as investment frauds, accounting for $1.3 billion (£1 billion) in total losses.
Detectives have linked several of the suspect sites, including DTX Exchange, Intel Markets, Cryptids, Algo Tech Trades, and Unilabs Finance, to the same network.
All appear to be defunct except for Unilabs Finance, which remains active online. The site describes itself as “the best-performing crypto superfund” and claims to manage $30 million in assets.
It did not respond to a request for comment from Decrypt about the police’s allegations.
The Met added that some of these websites have previously operated under different domain names, making them harder to track and increasing the risk to investors.
“We recognise the devastating impact that fraud can have on people and that’s why we’re committed to investigating crimes of this nature and supporting those affected,” Bourne said.
“Though we are still very much in the early stages of the investigation, we believe this crime is affecting victims in every corner of the world and strongly advise members of the public not to engage with or invest through the websites listed.”
