- Volk stated that the initial investigation by police found that the group operated a lot of call centers in Moscow having over 500 workstations.
- The Security service employees revealed that the group had cheated tens of thousands of citizens from over 20 countries.
- The officials claim that a lot of callers present themselves as Ministry of Internal Affairs employees or Federal Security Service officers.
The police of Russia have arrested around 300 people in a raid on a suspected international call center crypto scam operating from Moscow.
The spokeswoman of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Irina Volk took to the social media platform Telegram and posted that the Federal Security Service arrested employees of a fraud call center.
Volk further revealed that the accused persons contacted foreigners and induced them to put their money in cryptocurrency. She accused the employees of the call center of also trying to induce people based overseas to explore fake trading platforms.
The imprisonment
Officers also accused that some of the robbed money were utilized in funding the Armed forces of Ukraine. The employees of the alleged call center will probably be charged under Article 159 of the Russian criminal code. This article mainly covers fraud done by an organized group or particularly at a big scale.
The court can directly send a maximum of 10 years to jail to anyone involved in this crime. Volk stated that the initial investigation by police found that the group operated a lot of call centers in Moscow having over 500 workstations.
The Spokesperson added, “Officials from these centers convinced natives of other countries to put their money in cryptocurrency as well as other different trading platforms. Once they agreed and sent their money, the scammers cut off all contact with them. Some of the media outlets accused that the majority of the people in the videos were foreign citizens.
At the same time, she added that the group used smart methods to confuse inspectors and hide their work. The group had also introduced an enlisted network to employ a multilingual group of employees.
The Khimprom group
The Security service employees revealed that the group had cheated tens of thousands of citizens from over 20 countries. They also revealed that the group was associated with an international fraud network managed by Yegor Burkin, the at-large leader of the Khimprom organized crime group.
As per the Police, the Khimprom group is the main drug smuggling network that does its operations from both Russia and Ukraine. The video of the raid was released by the Ministry which revealed that the officers were supposedly about to arrest a group of people.
The video also reveals that rows of workstations were equipped with headsets, monitors, and PCs. The ministry has alerted regarding a sharp increase in telephone fraud calls based on crypto. The officials claim that a lot of callers present themselves as Ministry of Internal Affairs employees or Federal Security Service officers.
