Ukrainian women fleeing war exploited in multimillion-dollar gambling fraud scheme

Spanish police arrested 12 suspects in a two-year probe into a criminal network that recruited displaced Ukrainian women to open bank accounts, then took over those accounts and used stolen identities and automated betting bots to launder about $5.5 million through online gambling platforms; investigators found over 5,000 stolen identities and at least 3,000 compromised credit cards, seized cash, cryptocurrency, luxury vehicles and electronic devices, and linked proceeds to luxury real estate purchases in Europe.