FRANKFURT: German police have busted a network of fraudulent call centres, probably Europe’s largest, responsible for thousands of calls a day trying to scam people.
A global police operation involving officers from Germany, Bosnia, Kosovo, Albania, and Lebanon raided 12 call centres and arrested 21 people on April 18, Europol said in a separate statement.
German authorities said that searches also took place in Serbia.
The complex probe dubbed Operation Pandora successfully uncovered what is probably the largest call centre fraud scheme in the continent, Interior Minister of the German state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, Thomas Strobl said.
The callers would pose as bank employees, close relatives, customer service agents or police officers, according to Europol, and would use multiple manipulation tactics to shock and cheat their victims out of their savings.
The investigation began in December 2023 when a bank teller in Baden-Wuerttemberg grew suspicious of a customer’s request to withdraw a large amount of cash. He alerted the police, who stopped the victim from handing the money over to the scammers.
Police then linked the phone numbers used by the scammers to a huge operation, sparking a wider probe.
German Officers Work Around the Clock
Over 100 German officers were tasked with listening in on the call centre calls in real-time, working around the clock and monitoring up to thirty conversations at the same time.
Police warned the potential victims, preventing losses of ten million euros (10.7 million dollars) in some six thousand cases, Baden-Wuerttemberg authorities and Europol said.
Investigators also collected information about the fraudulent callers’ infrastructure, culminating in the global swoops coordinated by Europol.
During the raids, investigators confiscated cash and assets amounting to 1 million euros as well as electronic evidence that should lead to information about possible more call centres and more scammers, Europol said.
