An international coordinated action day, coming as part of Operation Chargeback, has targeted three major fraud and money laundering networks.
Conducted on 4 November 2025, the coordinated action day, led by the Cybercrime Department of the General Prosecutor’s Office in Germany and the German Federal Crime Police Office, the operation has been looking into these networks since December 2020. According to the official press release, over 60 house searches were run, and 18 arrest warrants have been executed. These criminal networks are alleged to have misused credit card data from more than 4.3 million cardholders, located across 193 countries. The estimated damage from the fraud scheme goes over EUR 300 million, while attempted damages total over EUR 750 million.
Europol took part in this investigation, which targeted 44 suspects from Germany and other countries, with the accused including individuals reportedly involved in the fraud networks, executives from German payment service providers, intermediaries, crime-as-a-service providers who facilitated shell companies, and an independent risk manager. Just in Germany, agents conducted searches on 29 premises across a variety of Federal States and executed five arrest warrants. Additionally, the investigation saw assets worth over EUR 35 million secured in Luxembourg and Germany.
How did the fraudsters operate?
As detailed by Europol, between 2016 and 2021, the suspects reportedly utilised stolen credit card data to make approximately 19 million fake online subscriptions on professionally operated websites, mostly providing dating and streaming services, among others. Developed to evade search engine indexing, these websites could only be accessed through direct URLs and links. These charges on credit cards were kept to a minimum, approximately EUR 50 per month, with vague descriptions, leading to difficulties for cardholders in identifying unauthorised transactions.
Furthermore, these suspects supposedly exploited the infrastructure of four German payment service providers to process and launder the transactions. Among them, six suspects, including executives and compliance officers, are now accused of conspiring with the fraud networks, allowing them to access the payment infrastructure in exchange for fees. Additionally, to cover their activities, the suspects leveraged several shell companies, mostly registered in the UK and Cyprus, with these firms being used to disperse the fraudulent transactions, thus reducing the risk of chargebacks and detection.
Taking action against financial crime
On the action day, coordinated processes were conducted in Germany, the US, Canada, Singapore, Luxembourg, Cyprus, Spain, Italy, and the Netherlands. Also, the measures were supported by Europol and Eurojust. According to officials from Europol, Operation Chargeback comes as a testament to the force of international cooperation in taking down complex criminal networks. They added that, by utilising Europol’s analytical capabilities and assisting in cross-border coordination, the involved parties have been able to dismantle the networks defrauding credit card users globally.
