Ukrainian Cops Bust Prolific Fraud Call Center

Investigators in Ukraine have busted a call center operation blamed for defrauding an estimated 18,000 Kazakhstani victims.

Officers from Ukraine’s Cyber Police Department and the Main Investigative Department of the National Police teamed up to arrest 40 individuals in connection with the scheme, including three Dnipro residents who were allegedly in charge.

The call center staff rang up targets in Kazakhstan pretending to be IT security workers from their banks.

After convincing the victims that their accounts had been accessed by outsiders, they apparently elicited sensitive account information under the guise of attempting to cancel the ‘fraudulent’ transactions.

The scammers used this account info to access and transfer victim funds into accounts they controlled, as well as taking out loans in their names.

The organizers of the plot are said to have paid the call center operators extra depending on how much they managed to obtain from their victims.

It’s unclear how much was ultimately stolen from these victims, although they were targeted systematically from databases containing their personal information, the Cyber Police of Ukraine said.

Searches of the call center and suspects’ homes revealed the existence of these lists, as well as 45 pieces of computer equipment, mobile phones and SIM cards which were subsequently seized.

The investigation is ongoing, but those already arrested face up to eight years in jail for offenses under Part 3 of Article 190 (Fraud) of the Criminal Code of Ukraine.

Police in the Eastern European country had several similar successes in 2022.

In August, they claimed to have exposed a network of call centers involved in bank vishing schemes designed to trick victims into handing over their card details, as well as cryptocurrency investment fraud.

Then in November, Ukrainian police played a major role in an international policing operation that bust a $200m investment fraud operation involving an estimated 2000 people.

Editorial credit icon image: aquatarkus / Shutterstock.com