A total of 13 home searches took place on Tuesday morning in Valcea and Olt counties, as well as in Bucharest, targeting members of a criminal group suspected of illegal operations involving IT devices or software, illegal access to computer systems, altering the integrity of computer data, computer fraud, and deception with particularly serious consequences, all committed continuously, as reported by representatives of the Valcea County Police Inspectorate (IPJ) - stiripesurse.ro
According to the quoted source, the victims are hundreds of citizens from European countries who have suffered damages totaling over 106 million euro. This action was carried out simultaneously by the Valcea Organised Crime Combat Service police officers and prosecutors from the Directorate for Investigating Organised Crime and Terrorism (DIICOT) - Valcea Territorial Office. In this case, two home searches were also conducted in Germany and Austria by prosecutors from the General Prosecutor's Office in Bamberg.
"Based on investigations conducted with the support of Eurojust, within a joint investigation team with judicial authorities from Germany, it was found that, in 2022, three individuals allegedly formed an organised criminal group in Romania, later joined by other members. The group's goal was to obtain significant material benefits from committing fraud. Thus, from August 2022 to December 2024, the members of the organized criminal group, using phishing techniques, allegedly took control of 120 accounts belonging to users of an international online trading platform, who had a history of conducting commercial transactions without incidents. Subsequently, the suspects, benefiting from the credibility of the victims on the platform, allegedly used the accounts to post fictitious sales ads for goods they did not actually own. In this way, they deceived several people (foreign citizens), persuading them to transfer money into bank accounts opened by the group's intermediaries for products that, in fact, did not exist," said the representatives of IPJ Valcea.
