Finland, Norway arrest 25 in call center scam case

Finland and Norway have arrested 25 people in connection with a fraudulent call center that defrauded pensioners, the Norwegian newspaper Verdens Gang (VG) reported on Monday, October 7.

The exact number of victims of the criminals’ actions is currently unknown. In June 2024, the Finnish Police Department reported that the damage amounted to about €1 million. The Norwegian police have signed a cooperation agreement with Finland and Denmark to investigate the case through the Eurojust Court in The Hague.

According to VG, a group of fraudsters set up a call center in Finland, where the criminals spent several months defrauding elderly Norwegians of money. The scammers, posing as bank or police employees, called pensioners and reported that their bank account had allegedly been hacked by fraudsters.

In order to save their money, the victims were convinced to transfer the money to a “safe” account or asked to provide bank account details.On September 24, a new scheme to deceive Hamster Kombat users became known . Fraudsters offer to withdraw money from the game at a favorable exchange rate for rubles. The number of such atrocities increased significantly at the end of September, when the developers summed up the results of the first season of the project.After gaining access to bank funds, the fraudsters transferred all of the pensioners’ money to fraudulent cards and blocked their phone number.