Smishing gang smashed thanks to an operation by Almeria province’s Guardia Civil

ALMERIA province’s Guardia Civil investigators have dismantled a criminal organisation who emptied bank accounts via smishing.

Snared by a system that combined a SMS message and phishing – hence the term smishing – victims were fooled into believing that they had received a genuine message from their bank, warning that accounts were either blocked or otherwise compromised.

They were then duped into revealing their bank details and passwords, enabling the scammers to access their accounts and transfer the proceeds to Eastern Europe.  Here the stolen cash was invested in hard-to-trace cryptocurrency.

The Revomarca operation was launched in October 2021, following several formal complaints from Almeria province residents whose bank accounts had been ransacked via smishing.

Guardia Civil investigators have traced 16 people who were operating inside Spain as well as elsewhere in the EU. Of these, four were arrested in Madrid while the person believed to be the brains behind the scheme has been detained in Barcelona.  A sixth person is under investigation in Burgos (Castilla y Leon).

Meanwhile, the Almeria investigators have taken legal steps to ask the authorities in Hungary, Greece, Italy, France, Germany and the Czech Republic to locate and detain further suspects.

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