The National Police have dismantled an organization that has carried out a large number of scams up to 150,000 euros and leaving a trail of victims of more than 80 victims.
Criminals scam 150,000 euros by phone. The National Police have dismantled an organization of cybercriminals who, through telephone scams, have managed to defraud a large number of people, committing almost a hundred crimes and managing to amass the amount of 150,000 euros through a well-established network of scams.
Smishing, vishing and phishing. The social engineering techniques used by the group of fraudsters have been the three mentioned, allowing them to deceive different people until they commit 80 crimes in different provinces of Spain. They impersonated different banking entities, requesting data from users and taking advantage of trust in order to steal as much money as possible.
54 detainees, ten women and 44 men. The police operation began in April of this year, when a computer attack was detected on one of the servers of a bank located in Ontinyent, Valencia, from which the information of several clients was extracted. With this data, the criminals contacted the victims by SMS or by phone, pretending to be the bank and requesting security codes.
Access online banking as a step prior to theft. By obtaining the security codes, criminals could access online banking and, once there, it was only a matter of carrying out transfer or withdrawal operations in order to completely dismantle user accounts. This network was made up of people aged between 16 and 51.
They scam 150,000 euros by phone: how to avoid falling for these scams
Phone scams are a serious problem. Avoiding falling into this type of situation is not too complicated, in fact, it is easy if a series of parameters are met. The main objective is to prevent your account information from falling into the wrong hands, and it is essential to adopt a suspicious attitude towards any type of interaction related to banks.
Never provide personal or bank details by SMS or phone. Banks have ways of verifying that you, as their customer, are who you say you are. No bank will ask you to share your passwords with them, in fact, they urge you to never do this because it can lead to fraud situations like the one experienced by these more than 80 people.
Alicante, Barcelona and Lleida. These are the cities in which the arrests have been made by the National Police of the 54 people who were involved in this network of telephone scams. Now it only remains to wait for the respective trials and interventions to be carried out, as indicated by the ABC.