Financial scam and fake online trading, major operation by the Italian and Albanian police called "Dream Earnings": hundreds defrauded.

Financial scam and fake online trading, major operation by the Italian and Albanian police called "Dream Earnings": hundreds defrauded.

La Public Prosecutor's Office of Pordenone and the Special Prosecutor's Office Against Corruption and Organized Crime SPAK of Tirana (Albania) have concluded an article investigative activity which, within the framework of the Joint Investigation Team between Italy and Albania, led to the issuing of fourteen ordinances of precautionary custody, of which nine in prison and five under house arrest, compared to the same number subjects believed to belong to a transnational organization dedicated to fake online trading financial scam.

On the day of 26th July the agents of Albanian Police and Italian Police they tracked down ed nine of the fourteen recipients of measures were arrested in Tirana while five were untraceable and are actively sought; in particular, five arrested people were sent to prison, while four were instead subjected to house arrest.

Le fourteen precautionary measures they follow and represent a important development investigation of the judicial police activity carried out last October 25th as part of the operation "dream earnings” during which 3 people were arrested and a call center was seized.

In addition to the fourteen recipients of precautionary measures, the activity survey led to referral to state of freedom more forty-four citizens Albanians, identified as all members, with specific tasks and roles, of the aforementioned criminal association.

- investigators of the Pordenone Flying Squad and the Operational Center for Cyber ​​Security - Postal and Communications Police of Friuli Venezia Giulia, with the collaboration of the Postal and Communications Police Service, the Central Operational Service and the Service for International and Police Cooperation -Office of the Security Expert in Albania, carried out in Tirana, together with the Regional Directorate of the Tirana Police, the NBI (National Bureau Investigation of SPAK) and the Cyber ​​Crimes Unit of the Albanian Police, also numerous searches against the arrested Albanian citizens who allowed, among other things, to find and seize computer equipment for cryptocurrency mining.

The organization is estimated to have defrauded several hundred Italian citizens residents throughout the national territory for an amount exceeding five million euros; a sum that probably represents only the tip of the iceberg of much larger figures.

Le investigations they began following a complaint received by the Postal Police of Pordenone. Subsequent investigations brought to light a particularly complex fraud scheme, in which the victims, contacted by telephone, came convinced from scammers to invest initially very low amounts, which however generated apparent stratospheric returns. Some victims, in fact, saw their invested assets triple in the space of a few days, viewing the returns by consulting fake trading platforms configured specifically by the association to make the deal more credible.

In course more than 42.000 interceptions telephone calls carried out by Italian investigators, it emerged how skilled the scammers were in using real persuasion techniques, to the point of convincing unsuspecting citizens to pay, over time, several hundred thousand euros into foreign bank accounts.

I Fraudsters they were particularly able to empathize with potential victims: The dialogues ranged from the ongoing pandemic emergency at the time of the events, to the victims' personal, sentimental and family situations, presenting themselves as new friends and confidants.

To be scammed were men and women of all ages and from various social backgrounds (workers, professionals, but also housewives and pensioners), residing in different regions of the national territory, attracted by the possibility of earning money quickly and deceived by unscrupulous scammers.

Il modus operandi used by the criminal group was always the same and rather tried and tested: after gaining the victim's trust, the criminals made an initial investment proposal of €250 in Amazon shares by observing their performance for a week. Based on what they learned in conversations with the victims, the scammers then proposed extending the investment in the bitcoin cryptocurrency by asking and obtaining from the victims the payment of thousands of euros into foreign accounts. With every bank transfer in fact the input corresponded to one sale of bitcoin in favor of another unknown Wallet, which thus caused the money to be lost.

Il partnership had a real call center has been set up, with different internal figures: there were in fact operators who managed the first contact with customers and verified their willingness to invest, and real "consultants" who guided the victims step by step towards the investments they said were most advantageous.

La retention of the "companies” it became like this effective to the point that the victim, in most cases, agreed to let the scammer operate on his PC, which remotely arranged foreign bank transfers "in real time" using remote control software called "Anydesk". The scammers, however, did not limit themselves to this: in fact, it was frequent to check the victims' emails, photographs and documents, all information which was exploited to carry out social engineering for the plagiarism of the unfortunate victims if they proved reluctant to make subsequent investments. Other times, upon perceiving the victims' hesitation, the scammers became aggressive and ruthless, also exploiting the information previously learned, to the point of convincing them to request funding dedicated to new investments.

In other cases, the victims spontaneously handed over their login credentials to their home banking services to their "consultant", in order to speed up investment operations by seizing on a particular market trend.

Severalinstead, the reasons that the scammers put forward every time the victims wanted to cash in on the false profits, among which was a false commission to be paid, for the release of the money, to a supposed European Union agency due to Brexit. The amounts, once again, were collected by the association which, obviously, did not even return the "invested" sum.

Il modus operandi of the organization was reconstructed through intense technical activity and through the interception of the server telematic flows used by the association to manage the call center; in particular, the investigations made it possible to ascertain how the criminal group, which proved to be particularly skilled from a technical point of view, managed to obscure the Albanian IP addresses actually used, instead making the fraudsters believe that the connection started from Italy, thus bypassing the alert systems of the unaware banking institutions.

The analysis of current accounts, carried out by investigators through investigations involving various member countries of the European Union including Cyprus, Lithuania, Estonia, Holland and Germany, have brought to light the fact that the victims' money, in most cases, came converted into cryptocurrencies linked to untraceable foreign accounts.

Decisive for the investigation it turned out to be even the in-depth analysis carried out by Italian investigators of the contents of the electronic devices and computers seized from those arrested during the searches and precautionary measures carried out last October 25th.

Its the analysis of IT media seized from the latter subjects (computers and mobile phones) and over sixty computers seized within the call center it allowed us to unravel the complex organization and decipher roles and responsibility, revealing the organizational chart identifying the directors and top management figures of the group against whom the precautionary measures were carried out.

The analysis activity of the seized material also made it possible to identify all the operators who followed one another over time within the call center, all of whom were released in a state of freedom.

The illicit organization it worked according to very precise schemes: the various call center operators, who had a real salary and received bonuses once the scam was concluded, were divided into sectors; at the top of each group there was a leader who, in addition to receiving a commission for completed scams, received a bonus for scams completed by the operators of his group. Each boss in turn responded to an administrator, called supervisor, who in addition to having the highest salary obtained significant profits from the scams carried out by the entire association.

Plus they were sanctions and punishments are foreseen for those who are unable to conclude contracts.

Un real matryoshka system which led the various operators to “challenge each other” among themselves competing to see who was more skilled at concluding contracts and bringing in commissions; all obviously to the detriment of the unaware citizens, poor victims of this absurd competition.

The activity experienced it also allowed the identification and identification of the technicians responsible for the association who managed the entire IT infrastructure of the call centre, also aimed at hindering and preventing investigations against them and the identification of the call center in question.