Totally phoney Over 100 people detained in raids on scam call centres in Latvia and Lithuania

Over 100 people have been detained in Latvia and Lithuania in an operation targeting an international phone scam.

Europol and Eurojust, the Latvian State Police (Valsts policija) and the Lithuanian Police (Lietuvos Policija) detained 108 people in Riga and Vilnius on suspicion of being involved in an international call centre scam.

On March 24th and 25th, hundreds of officers, including special intervention teams, raided a total of three call centres belonging to the same organised crime group.

Members of the gang are accused of defrauding victims across the world.

As part of the scam, 200 fake ‘traders’ across the centres, speaking English, Russian, Polish and Hindi, would call unsuspecting victims to persuade them to part with their savings, promising lucrative investment opportunities.

However, the investments in Bitcoin, commodities and foreign currencies were all fake.

According to preliminary calculations, the suspects arrested are believed to have turned an illegal profit of over €3 million per month with their scam.

The coordinated strike against the gang resulted in 80 people detained in Latvia and 28 detained in Lithuania, seizure of cash, bank accounts and luxury vehicles, and €95,000 in crypto currencies.

Europol’s European Financial and Economic Crime Centre supported the investigation from the onset by bringing together the national investigators from Latvia and Lithuania to establish a joint strategy and to organise the intensive exchange of evidence needed to prepare for the final stage of the investigation.

Europol experts from both its European Financial and Economic Crime Centre and European Cybercrime Centre were deployed to Latvia and Lithuania to assist the national authorities on the day of the raids.