A scheme for laundering millions of euros and US dollars was disrupted by the Plovdiv Prosecutor's office in a joint operation with the Chief Directorate for Combatting Organised Crime.
This is an extremely powerful group that has carried out the so-called "phishing crimes" and hacked bank accounts abroad. The amounts in them were rechanneled to the accounts of front men in Bulgaria. Most of them are from Bulgaria’s second largest city of Plovdiv and have been aware what they were involved in, District Prosecutor, Rumen Popov, said.
The group siohoned off the accounts of companies abroad. The money was rechanneled to the accounts of 15 front men in Bulgaria.
All 15 people employed in the scam have a low social status, and received small remunerations for the huge sums they withdrew.
The condition for the front men was that each of them had at least two bank accounts. The final destination of the laundered money was China.
There are no Bulgarian banks involved in the scheme. The successful operation resulted in preventing more than $ 1.7 million from being redirected or withdrawn by the proxies.
The rechanneling or withdrawal of further 1.4m euros has been prevented.
Two of the scam organizers are in custody - a 62-year-old Bulgarian woman and a 42-year-old Lebanese man. Two foreigners were at the top of the network - a Dane of Arab descent and a Lebanese. They are circulated as internationally wanted. One of them is subject to an Interpol red notice at the insistence of Great Britain.
The District Prosecutor's Office in Plovdiv is adamant that thanks to the prompt actions of investigators and cybersecurity specialists, hacking of amounts worth over 40 million euros has been prevented.
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