National Police Eliminate Large-Scale Network of Fraudulent Call Centers with Billion-Dollar Turnover (VIDEO)
More than 2500 operators “worked” in “offices” located in almost every regional center of the country. More than 840 law enforcement officers took part in complex measures to eliminate the activities of fraudulent call centers, 660 of whom were police officers. As a result, the centers of activity of fraudsters were eliminated in 16 regions, namely: in Kiev, Dnipro, Ivano-Frankivsk, Odessa, Ternopil, Rivne, Zaporizhia, Poltava, Vinnytsia, Sumy, Lviv, Cherkassy, Zakarpattia, Chernihiv, Kropyvnytskyi and Kharkiv.
In each of the call centers there were from 50 to 200 operators. The latter were recruited through instant messengers, sending messages with job offers and promises of decent wages. Among the applicants, they were interviewed and selected the most communicable, familiarized with the functionality and instructed on the algorithm of actions during communication with potential victims.
Representing themselves as employees of government agencies, banking institutions, investment and telecommunications companies, fraudsters first received confidential data of citizens, and then money from their bank accounts, which was transferred to the controlled accounts of fraudsters. Not only Ukrainians were deceived, but also citizens of the European Union and the United States.
To gain the trust of the interlocutors, they held a telephone conversation with them for several days with the function of changing the number and only then acted. In the case of investments, citizens were offered to invest in profitable projects and even paid the first interest. Getting quick money in no time lured the victims to invest even more, after which the scammers stopped communicating.
To neutralize the activities of fraudsters, law enforcement officers conducted more than 150 searches throughout the country, involving investigators of the Main Investigation Department, operatives of the Departments of Strategic Investigations and Cyber Police, fighters of special forces and police departments in the regions, prosecutors of the Office of the Prosecutor General and regions and employees of the SBU.
Almost 4000 units of computer equipment, more than 650 mobile phones and 200 IP-telephony complexes, “rough” records, methodologies with algorithms of actions, 1500 SIM cards of various operators, including foreign ones, more than 700 thousand hryvnias in national and foreign currency were seized. Measures are underway to establish the full circle of victims and suspects.
The eradication of fraudulent call centers remains one of the priority areas of work of the National Police in 2024.
National Police of Ukraine
