Criminals organized “all-centers” in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro and defrauded more than 665 citizens of the Czech Republic from there for more than 7 million 609 thousand euros, which is equivalent to 300 million 733 thousand UAH.
Ukrainian law enforcement officers extradited to the Czech Republic 5 members of an international criminal organization that defrauded hundreds of Czechs for more than 7.5 million euros
So far, investigators and employees of the Department of Combating Narcotic Crime of the National Police, escorted by the National Guard of Ukraine, have handed over five fraudsters to representatives of law enforcement agencies of the Czech Republic at the Krakivets international checkpoint in the Lviv region. The sixth attacker will be extradited in the near future.
More than 100 Ukrainian and Czech police officers were involved in the investigation of this proceeding, working under the procedural guidance of the Prosecutor General’s Office and with the support of Europol and Eurojust as part of the JIT The Joint Investigation Team
The JIT — the agreement on the creation of a joint investigative group, which was concluded between Ukrainian and Czech law enforcement officers — helped law enforcement officers promptly stop the criminal activities of the international criminal organization.
We will remind that during the pre-trial investigation, the police found two organizers of this “call center” – citizens of Ukraine and the Czech Republic, who recruited more than 20 people to work in the criminal organization.
During calls, fraudsters used spoofing technology, i.e. replacing the phone number with any desired one. Posing as bank security officers, the fraudsters told victims that their bank account had been hacked and that in order to keep the funds, they needed to temporarily transfer them to another “secure” account provided by the criminals.
The authenticity of this information was confirmed by another call – allegedly from a police officer, who confirmed the authenticity of the account hacking and the need to transfer money to another account.
As part of searches that took place in the city of Dnipro in April 2023, investigators detained Czech citizens, who were handed over to Czech law enforcement officers on September 25, 2023 for further pre-trial investigation.
Currently, Czech competent authorities are investigating a criminal case against them for fraud, provided for in part 1, part 5. a) Article 209 of the Criminal Code of the Czech Republic, for which the accused faces from 5 to 10 years of imprisonment.
Regarding other defendants, National Police investigators are investigating criminal proceedings under Part 4 of Art. 190 (Fraud committed in particularly large amounts) and part 1., part 2 of Art. 255 (Creation, management of a criminal community or criminal organization, as well as participation in it) of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, for which the accused faces from 7 to 12 years of imprisonment.