Detention of a Latvian-Ukrainian group of swindlers

[Carding]

Employees of the Cybercrime Control Department of the Main Criminal Police Department of Latvia, with the assistance of their colleagues from law enforcement agencies of Ukraine, detained members of an international organized criminal group associated with telephone fraud from August 1 to 4.

The call center was located in the Dnepropetrovsk region

According to the State Police of Latvia, a little earlier, on March 15, 2023, ten members of the group were detained in the Dnipropetrovsk region of Ukraine. However, during the investigation it was established that the group included other participants who could not be detained in March.

They continued the work of the criminal call center, which was equipped in the city of Kamenskoye.

In this regard, from August 1 to August 4, 2023, suspects were simultaneously detained in Latvia and Ukraine. In particular, five members of an organized group were detained in Ukraine. The police conducted searches at the residence of the suspects.

"The police are calling you"

In Latvia, suspects of "laundering" were detained with the aim of their further legalization and transfer to members of an organized group located in Ukraine.

According to Latvian law enforcement officers, initially, the Cybercrime Control Department identified a recent trend of telephone fraud, when fraudsters increasingly began to impersonate employees of the State Police or banking security services in order to gain access to personal data and bank accounts.

Fraudsters came up with different stories, for example, that this data is needed because someone is engaged in illegal activities on the resident's bank account. The phone screen of the recipient of the call displayed false information, namely, that the incoming call was made from a subscriber number registered in Latvia, i.е. from the police or the bank, but the scammers were actually in the territory of Ukraine.

How the money was taken

With the help of modern technology, scammers can imitate a phone number from any country, including the number of any person or company, representatives of the state police remind.

Call center operators called residents of Latvia and spoke Russian. During the conversation, the fake operator, pointing to the alleged fraudulent activities on the account in one of the Latvian banks, gained access to the victim's personal accounts. After that, funds from their account were transferred to the accounts of persons associated with members of an organized criminal group.

Having received this information, a joint investigation team was created in the Cybercrime Department with the participation of Ukrainian colleagues. As a result of intensive cooperation, the activities of this criminal group were stopped.

The State Police noted that successful international cooperation, as a result of which it was possible to stop the activities of an international criminal group and obtain significant evidence outside of Latvia, became possible thanks to the support of Eurojust.

In the course of a joint investigation, it was possible to compensate for the losses incurred by some residents of Latvia as a result of fraudulent actions of call center operators.

In the course of joint operational-search activities, the Cybercrime Control Department of the State Police also managed to identify those persons who kept illegally obtained funds in virtual wallets. The police reported that in total they managed to freeze and seize about 229,000 euros.

The investigation continues.

 

[Carding]

The state police, in cooperation with law enforcement agencies of Ukraine, repeatedly stopped the activities of an organized criminal group that was engaged in telephone fraud.

The activities of the criminal group were initially terminated in March of this year, but later it turned out that there were more members of the group, and those who escaped detention agreed to continue their criminal activities. As a result of a joint successful operation by the criminal police of the two countries, 10 more persons were detained last week who were engaged in telephone fraud in Ukraine and Latvia.

Among the detainees were the organizers of fraudulent transactions, and the so-called money mules.

“In Latvia, also among the five detainees were call center employees who directly called the victims, and those who were looking for those who wanted to provide their account for a certain bribe to transfer money from account to account in order to confuse the traces. That is, among the detainees were the organizers of this process, and the money mules themselves,” she said.

Law enforcement officers call the investigative actions and the detention operation very successful, since they managed not only to detain members of the criminal group of telephone scammers, but also to return some of the victims of the money illegally withdrawn from their accounts:

“A third of all the victims received back the funds withdrawn from their accounts. Moreover, they were returned to the account as much as was previously withdrawn. This was achieved due to the fact that the investigation reached an agreement with the detainees that they can count on the mildest possible punishment under this article if they return their funds to the victims. I want to note that this is an excellent job and a great success for the police officers who managed to liquidate the existing call center and connect its individual operators with the victims. More often we are dealing with already closed call centers that deceived customers about six months ago. Therefore, it is very difficult to find ends and return the stolen money. But here everything happened very quickly and it was possible to stop the criminal actions in hot pursuit. In addition, we discovered a virtual wallet with a large amount of money, the so-called stash, in which, we suspect, illegally acquired funds were stored. He was arrested, and this made it possible to return the amounts of money illegally withdrawn from them to the accounts of the victims. Moreover, in Latvia there were also such victims, whose account was simply reset to zero. 5,000 euros were withdrawn from someone's account, and all 30,000 from someone - all that was. As you can see, this so-called “business” was very profitable.”

Among the employees of the Dnepropetrovsk call center, which was contacted by the police, there were mostly young men, but there were also a few girls.

“The operators themselves who called the victims are mostly Ukrainian citizens - girls and young people born in the 90s and even the early 2000s, and the organizers who opened the call center are already older - born in the 80s.”

The detained Ukrainian citizens will be tried in Ukraine, and those who do not wish to cooperate with the investigation and return the money to their victims will face more severe punishment than those who voluntarily return the illegally withdrawn from the accounts. What terms threaten Ukrainian swindlers, the prosecutor's office and the court of Ukraine will decide.

In Latvia, fraud on a large scale is punishable by 3 to 10 years in prison.