The sting, supported by Europol, nabbed 21 individuals believed to be running an enormous criminal network that swindled untold numbers of victims through a variety of scams.
In a nutshell: Law enforcement agencies across Europe and the Middle East just took down the « largest call center fraud scheme in Europe, » as a German minister described it. In a massive coordinated strike dubbed Operation Pandora, police in Germany, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, and Lebanon raided a dozen call centers tied to thousands of daily fraudulent calls.
The sting, supported by Europol, nabbed 21 individuals believed to be running an enormous criminal network that swindled untold numbers of victims through a variety of scams – from impersonating police to peddling bogus investments and romance fraud. The scammers used some wild scripts, working every angle to try and shock or manipulate people into forking over cash.
As detailed in a Europol press release, this whole saga kicked off last December when a bank teller in the German city of Freiburg got suspicious about a customer trying to withdraw over €100,000.
