It would have taken more for this 79-year-old retiree to fall into the trap. At the end of April, this Zurich resident was contacted by an alleged police officer, who explained to him that the notes that the septuagenarian had recently deposited into his account could be fake. The person posing as an agent then asked his victim to withdraw a large sum of money from the bank and hand it over to the police for verification. But the man, who found the whole story a little strange, went to the nearest police station.
Based on this information, the municipal police took action, which led, shortly afterwards, to several arrests, some of which took place last Monday and Tuesday. Searches were also carried out in the cantons of Zurich and Solothurn. The agents notably seized an amount of around 500,000 francs in cash, the object of an alleged crime stemming from telephone scams. The four people concerned, three men and a woman, Turks and Afghans aged 24 to 43, were brought before the Public Prosecutor’s Office, inform the police.
Already in April, as part of Operation “Pandora”, Europol was able to dismantle fraudulent call centers in several countries. The European criminal police agency was helped by officers from Germany, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo and Lebanon. The centers raided were the Source of thousands of fraudulent calls per day.
The operation began in December 2023, thanks to an attentive employee of a Friborg bank. A customer, who had tried to withdraw more than 100,000 euros in cash, had aroused the suspicions of this employee. The latter, who quickly knew that the bank customer was the victim of a scam committed by fake agents, informed the real ones, and the crook was taken on board.
