back to article Europol op shutters 12 scam call centers and cuffs 21 suspected fraudsters

A Europol-led operation dubbed “Pandora” has shut down a dozen phone scam centers, and arrested 21 suspects. The cops reckon the action prevented criminals from bilking victims out of more than €10 million (£8.6 million, $11 million). The criminal network, which operated call centers in Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, and …

  1. Pascal Monett Silver badge

    "plus cash and other assets totaling €1 million"

    So, the rest of the money is where ?

    In the pockets of the big boys who never get caught.

    Good on shutting down those call centers, but Big Boss will just have more set up.

    You need to cut the head off if you want the body to die.

    1. Potemkine! Silver badge

      Re: "plus cash and other assets totaling €1 million"

      I fear it's a Hydra and cutting one head won't be enough. But that's better than nothing.

    2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: "plus cash and other assets totaling €1 million"

      21 arrests from dozens of raids seems a fairly small number. Possibly the minions have been let off if they helped to finger some of the higher-ups.

    3. HuBo Silver badge
      Thumb Up

      Re: "plus cash and other assets totaling €1 million"

      I'm happy to see this Europol field action (as opposed to their more boring office-oriented long-winded administrative meetings). It nicely involves multiple European states (countries; and Lebanon) -- as one may hope from a positively federated union.

      I can't remember seeing this story on the French TV News though (neither local, nor regional, nor national, nor international) as the News broadcasts seem to skip from country level to international (outside of EU) without much coverage of other EU states (the protests at US Universities, and extreme weather anywhere, are covered more -- with reports on food and cooking in-between, as fillers).

      It's hard for me to understand how folks here can be expected to vote in an informed way in next month's EU elections when TV's coverage of Europe is so spotty, underwhelming, and lacklustre. No wonder the far-right nationalists keep crawling ahead in voting-intention surveys.

      We need more and better reporting of positive EU-level actions IMHO, in our local newscasts, like this multifaceted Europol cybercrime bust, to better showcase the advantages of a solid federation. Thanks Jessica for this article!

      1. Clarecats

        Re: "plus cash and other assets totaling €1 million"

        European TV - I holidayed in Spain during winter a few years ago, and on a wet day I spent time learning Spanish from the rolling news TV channel. The programme contained 20 minutes of Spanish football, 20 minutes of Spanish culture - theatre, dancing festivals etc., and 20 minutes of national and international news, every hour.

  2. Khaptain Silver badge

    Why is this so prevalent

    Having worked with telephony systems and call centers, mostably Avaya, for many years I have never understood how this can go un-traced for so long. Telephone Systems keep track of everything and the operators clearly know which locations are making the most calls..

    Someone in Kosovo is making many calls all over Europe everyday and this goes unnoticed. C'mon, the data is there, I would be highly surprised that the Telco Operators are not feeding Interpol, the Police, Secret Services etc with this information on a daily, even hourly basis.

    1. Necrohamster Silver badge

      Re: Why is this so prevalent

      They hack into an insecure phone system, use it for a few days and move on.

      Caller ID seems to be spoofed in most cases with a number that's in a similar range to the target's. I guess the reasoning is someone's more likely to answer a call from a semi-familiar number?

      Telcos seem to be powerless to stop it. How difficult can it be at a network level to block a call that originates in say Germany to a UK number, where the originating caller ID appears to be a UK mobile number and the originating device isn't a mobile device. Pretty difficult? Looks like some additional logic would be needed

      I'm sure greater minds than mine could figure out a way if they thought about it for a while

      1. Anonymous Coward Silver badge
        Boffin

        Re: Why is this so prevalent

        VoIP complicates this significantly. Caller ID spoofing is easier, plus once you have a service you can use a VPN to access it while hiding your location.

        And they're probably hacking into private SIP PBXes which by the nature of being hackable implies that the admin isn't paying much attention so won't be looking at the logs (or may not even have logging turned on)

      2. imanidiot Silver badge

        Re: Why is this so prevalent

        I doubt it. Far easier to pay off some of the less reputable phone company to keep schtumm or nowadays probably they're just using some sort of shady VOIP service that makes it impossible to separate the scam traffic from less disreputable users and hides it in the masses. Operations like this don't rely on hacked systems, far too unreliable.

      3. DJO Silver badge

        Re: Why is this so prevalent

        Telcos are not powerless to stop it but they have no incentive to stop it. They earn money from calls and it does not matter if the calls are scams or whatever, it's all revenue.

        1. Khaptain Silver badge

          Re: Why is this so prevalent

          Hacking in to large PBX's is not so easy, and those that do it usually creates calls to very expensive numbers, thereby generating revenue for themselves ( I know this from experience). Our Telco provides us with alerts and also automatically blocks outgoing when suspicion arises.

          Spoofing SIP still requires that the originating calls goes through a Telcos switch, only the number is spoofed, the call is still very traceable at the Telco level.

          "Telcos are not powerless to stop it but they have no incentive to stop it. They earn money from calls and it does not matter if the calls are scams or whatever, it's all revenue."

          Unfortunately I am prone to believe that this is probably the closest case..

        2. Missing Semicolon Silver badge
          FAIL

          Re: Why is this so prevalent

          Yep. Absolutely no responsibility for CLI, and that's how they like it. I suspect a lot of lobbying effort has been applied to to ensure that no liability for fraudulent CLI does not reside with the telco that's making coin from the calls.

          The Ford Pinto affair is a model, not a warning.

        3. katrinab Silver badge
          Meh

          Re: Why is this so prevalent

          Do they earn money from calls though? These days phone bills are entirely or almost entirely line rental.

      4. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: Why is this so prevalent

        "Telcos seem to be powerless to stop it."

        Telcos are not motivated to stop it. It brings in money and has no penalties for them.

        1. Antron Argaiv Silver badge

          Re: Why is this so prevalent

          The key is to identify and shut down the VOIP to PSTN bridge operator. This is the weak link...where the scam call traffic enters the telephone network. Unfortunately, this appears to be a whack-a-mole game. The telcos should be able to identify VOIP gateways carrying spam traffic quite easily, but they choose not to.

        2. MachDiamond Silver badge

          Re: Why is this so prevalent

          "Telcos are not motivated to stop it. It brings in money and has no penalties for them."

          There are telcos that specialize in servicing telemarketing companies/debt collectors/charity beggars/political activities whether they have any legitimacy or not. All they have to do is apply a thin veneer of plausible deniability and collect the money. I've looked up some of the unrecognized numbers I've received where no message was left and find phone companies I've never heard of and when I look at their websites, it's a load of waffle that could be distilled down to both scammers and dodgy telemarketers. They do try to dress it up a bunch with photos of attractive young business professionals and applications that I, as a target, won't be pleased to be on the end of.

      5. katrinab Silver badge
        Megaphone

        Re: Why is this so prevalent

        And how difficult can it be to block numbers that are spoofed to be from an invalid number, for example a non-existent area code, or, in the UK, a phone number that has 0 or 1 after the area code.

        Note, if you think you have an example of a number with 0 or 1 after the area code, you probably have too many digits in your area code, eg Cardiff is 029, not 02920. 02920 123456 is a valid number because it has a 2 after the area code. 02901 234567 is not a valid number.

        1. MachDiamond Silver badge

          Re: Why is this so prevalent

          "And how difficult can it be to block numbers that are spoofed to be from an invalid number, for example a non-existent area code, or, in the UK, a phone number that has 0 or 1 after the area code."

          It can be a nightmare when new area codes and prefixes get assigned. It takes some time for those to be recognized by the myriads of companies that provide spam filters. I've had some of that happen recently. When I look up an area code in the US, I can look it up and see who is assigned the prefixes (first 3 numbers). What's hard to tell is if that data hasn't been updated or the number I received a call from is using a prefix that hasn't been allocated yet. I expect that if I was using a paid service I might get more frequently updated data, but some of the free services aren't too bad. I'd love to have blocking software on my mobe that lets me kill an entire area-code/prefix in one go.

    2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: Why is this so prevalent

      "Someone in Kosovo is making many calls all over Europe everyday and this goes unnoticed."

      Presumably there are "legitimate" call centres making marketing spam calls and possibly really legitimate call-centres making bona fide outbound calls. Without a legal requirement to do so it wouldn't be the Telcos role to police this nor would they have the incentive to do so voluntarily.

      I've previously suggested a means to incentivise them. Enable the subscribers to report a recently received call by dialling a specific code. The originating number, as opposed to the faked number would be traced. If that were a subscriber of the same telco the caller would be charged a fee on the recipient's behalf to be credited to the recipient's account plus the telco's handling charge. The fee would naturally be higher for a recipient on a scheme such as TPS. If the call originated outside of the final telco's control the charges would be passed back to the telco who had forwarded it. They could then pass it on with their own handling charge until it arrived as a charge on either the caller's account or with a telco which had been insufficiently concerned to keep logs. Naturally some statistical work would be involved to set a minimum number of reports from different recipients to prevent someone trying to make money out of legitimate calls.

      On one level it would be to reimburse recipients of junk calls but would also help trace fraudulent calls. On another it would kill the whole call centre scam by making it unprofitable if the charges were paid which in turn would ensure telcos' credit control would make it much harder to set up anything other than bona fide call centres.

      On another level it would involve telcos making investments needed to implement it with the knowledge that by stopping the calls they'd never get their investment back in handling charges.

      On the real level bringing such a scheme forward as a serious proposal would very likely lead to telcos, ever anxious to help the authorities discovering some much simpler, cheaper and hitherto overlooked means to block what they adgreed was this disgraceful abuse of telecommunication systems.

      1. Gerry 3

        Re: Why is this so prevalent

        Apart from the the reverse charging aspect, this facility has existed for many years. It's 1477 Automatic Call Trace.

        It stores the caller's Network Number (the 'real' number) at the victim's local exchange for investigation by the police. That makes it far more useful than the ICO's hopelessly clunky reporting system which is a complete waste of time because the scammer's Presentation Number (the one you see or are told by 1471) is usually spoofed.

        Unfortunately hardly anyone has heard of 1477 Automatic Call Trace and it's seldom ensbled.

        If dozy Ofcom were any good they would have mandated all telcos to make this service available on all lines, and to publicise it widely.

        1. MachDiamond Silver badge

          Re: Why is this so prevalent

          "It stores the caller's Network Number (the 'real' number) at the victim's local exchange for investigation by the police. "

          That hits on another problem. The local police can't be bothered and are you going to report every call that tells you that your new car warranty is about to expire? If it's more along the lines that you have a warrant for your arrest but if you go buy some gift cards to "pay the fine", you can avoid being put in cuffs sort of thing, the local filth may tell you to take it up with federal police or whoever else that makes it an SEP. They've got enough on their hands investigating complaints that somebody used the wrong pronouns in connection with them in a social media post.

          1. This post has been deleted by its author

          2. Gerry 3

            Re: Why is this so prevalent

            1477 Automatic Call Trace was originally intended for use when death threats or similar calls were being received from withheld numbers. With some automated enhancements bolted on, it would be an ideal way to tackle the menaces of spam and scam calls.

            During or immediately after a call from a withheld or spoofed number you'd dial 1477 and be offered a menu to flag its type, e.g. Press 1 for a Death / Serious Threat, 2 for a Scam attempt or 3 for Spam (if you are on the TPS List but were still called).

            Type 1 threats would still need to be reported to the police in the usual way, but they'd now be able to identify the offending Network Number and take action. Types 2 and 3 would be referred to the telco for interception and/or outgoing blocking if a threshold number of automated complaints had been exceeded.

      2. MachDiamond Silver badge

        Re: Why is this so prevalent

        "Without a legal requirement to do so it wouldn't be the Telcos role to police this nor would they have the incentive to do so voluntarily."

        There are some "Know your customer" laws being promulgated, but I'd not be surprised if there were a carve-out for Telcos to not have to comply with them.

  3. Ryan D

    Random thought

    Is it just me or would it be absolutely killer if Europol sicced those strange evangelical call center types who ring you up at random and ask if you have found Jebus as your saviour while at you are trying to have supper,

    On these fiends. Ring them up very five minutes trying to get them to subscribe to watchtower magazine. If that doesn’t kill off these call centres I don’t know what will.

    1. MachDiamond Silver badge

      Re: Random thought

      "Ring them up very five minutes trying to get them to subscribe to watchtower magazine."

      The problem is that the lines they use for outbound calls are configured to reject inbound calls. The scammer will want you to call/text a different number or enter your information on a replica website. This way the really low hit rate routes somewhere that won't have loads of traffic that could be spotted automatically and they can replenish cancelled outgoing lines.

  4. This post has been deleted by its author

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