Four people have been arrested and eight others have been declared wanted as part of a one-year operation in our country, where a group of people set up fictitious businesses and deceived customers with online payments.
As part of the operation codenamed “PHISHING”, two Albanians were arrested, a Cameroonian and a Nigerian who in cooperation with each other had organized an online fraud scheme, where they received millions of euros. The arrested are Donald Anu 34 years old alias (Ugochukëu Emmanuel Emereibenu 39 years old) from Nigeria and Marie Goufan 31 years old from Cameroon, resident in Tirana, Fatbardh Danja 40 years old, resident in Tirana and Xhentil Kupe 54 years old, resident in Tirana.
In a press conference, the head of the Tirana Prosecutor’s Office, Elisabeta Imeraj gave details about the operation of this fraud scheme where the arrested and 8 others declared wanted interfered in the electronic systems of various companies and deceived their clients.
The detainees and their accomplices managed to log into the computer system and remained silent until they saw specific requests regarding various funds or payments. As soon as they found any such request they contacted the client, taking on the role of the receiving entity of the funds, informing them that the bank details of the company had changed and asking them to transfer the funds to the new account.
They being inside the communications have been able to produce an email message with the same look as the real thing. For this scheme to work, these citizens had opened fictitious commercial entities and in many cases with forged documents created through electronic devices, but also bank accounts with forged documents as administrators of entities.
“The entities that have been verified so far as fictitious commercial entities and registered in the National Business Center and that have subsequently been opened bank account numbers in their name are:
- CONNECTA INTERCONTINENTAL SHPK
- ËORLDËIDE GO LTD
- ËORLDËIDE TRADING LIMITED
- AFRICAN-ALBANIAN COMERCE
- KËOK TANG SHPK,
- KRACO LIMITED SHPK
- MICHAEL ODYLON LAGMON ROMERO SHPK
- PILATUS AIRCRAFT LTD SHPK
- TANG KËOK YUE SHPK
- LEKLIFARM GLOBAL sh.p.k
- MAIBOM GBMH
- HORTIFEEDS
- TEST FUCHS GBMH
- GS ECOMETAL CO LTD
- ECI PHARMACEUTICALS LLC
- AGNES KATBETH KREIMER
- XHENTIL KUPE
So far, entities have been identified that have fallen prey to this fraud from different countries of the world and more precisely from:
1.US
2.Germany
3.England
4.Turkey
5.Belgium
6.Switzerland
7.Finland
8.Lithuania
9.Philippine
Also, bank accounts opened in commercial banks have been identified and in close cooperation with these banks, the transactions performed by these citizens through fictitious companies created by them have been kept under control, in order to fully document this criminal activity. Monetary values identified and suspected of being redirected as a result of this criminal scheme have been returned to the entities that sent them, minimizing the damage and potential victims.
Until now, it is suspected that these citizens have exercised their criminal activity for a long period of about 2 years and together with unidentified citizens outside the territory of the Republic of Albania may have committed fraudulent payment by e-mail in an amount of about 4,000,000 euros “, it is said in the notification of the State Police.
Meanwhile, within this operation, 1 Huyndai vehicle, 3 laptop computers, 11 mobile phones, 20 SIM cards, 2 tablet computers, 3 subject seals, 8 credit / debit cards, 9 memory cards, other electronic devices were seized. auxiliaries, etc. and various documents such as bank certificates, bank receipts, photocopies of passports of Albanian and foreign citizens, invitations for residence permits, various notarial contracts, power of attorney, etc./abcnews.al
