Major phone scam gang broken, loot exceded €1.2 million in a few months

A concerted constabulary crackdown successful three parts of Greece involving counter-terrorism officers and drones has breached a highly organized pack of telephone scam artists who made astir €1.3 cardinal successful a fewer months, authorities said Monday.

Seven suspected pack members were arrested during the raids Friday successful cardinal Athens and Aharnes connected the capital’s northwestern fringes, Corinth, and Iraklio connected Crete, a constabulary statement said. Police are besides seeking a 23-year-old woman.

All look charges including fraud, machine fraud, money-laundering and aggravated theft. 

Police judge the pack was progressive since astatine slightest December 2025 and was capable to steal €1.29 cardinal from 41 radical successful various parts of Athens, arsenic well arsenic Kozani, Katerini, Kavala, Naoussa, Drama, Veria, Halkidiki and Thessaloniki successful bluish Greece.

The statement said that the “organized and professional” pack was split into two sections – 1 that worked a telephone halfway based adjacent Corinth scamming vulnerable people, and different that had members each implicit Greece and moved into enactment erstwhile a imaginable victim had been hooked successful their locality.

The scammers presented themselves arsenic accountants, talking their victims into giving them currency oregon jewellery kept astatine location or, failing that, their banking oregon cashcard credentials. The astir communal story was that the currency and valuables would request to beryllium registered to debar taxation.

Once the victim was secured, a pickup team would beryllium sent to cod the currency and valuables from their location oregon some different agreed point. 

“There were galore operational teams successful nonstop connection with the telephone center, acceptable to enactment each implicit Greece astatine immoderate moment, utilizing rented cars oregon cars belonging to relatives so arsenic to beryllium harder to catch,” the constabulary statement said.

Such scams targeting – albeit successful a non-violent manner – aged oregon vulnerable radical who support currency and valuables astatine location are highly communal and highly effective, contempt repeated nationalist consciousness campaigns.

Police regularly denote arrests of suspected scammers each implicit Greece, but the crackdown announced Monday is 1 of the biggest successful caller months.