The Italian National Postal and Communication Police Unit and the Romanian National Police, supported by Europol and Eurojust, have dismantled an organised criminal group involved in financial fraud, cybercrime, and money laundering.
The operation led to the seizures of personal computers, credit cards, properties, vehicles, and other assets with an overall estimated value of over EUR 1.5 million. The criminal organisation was using a wide network of money mules in Italy, created to launder criminal proceeds from a variety of cybercrime activities.
The criminal group was involved in financial frauds and cyber scams such as rental fraud (fraud through the advertisement of non-existent properties to rent) and CEO fraud (impersonating a company official to trigger large transfers to bogus accounts). With these frauds, the criminals were deceiving victims across Europe into making wire transfers to Italian bank accounts, owned by the money mules. It is estimated that the criminal group has generated up to EUR 20 million losses per year for victims across Europe.
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