On Friday, the police will transport from Ukraine to the Czech Republic six Czechs arrested in mid-April in Ukraine in the case of a Czech-Ukrainian gang of fake bankers.
“The police in Hradec Králové, who are investigating the extensive case, are awaiting charges of several criminal acts,” said Magdaléna Vlčková, spokesperson for the Hradec Králové Regional Police. “Ukraine extradited persons to the Czech Republic from so-called extradition custody. In the following days, we will conduct criminal proceedings with them.”
The escort with the suspects should arrive in Hradec Králové today. The spokeswoman did not specify the arrival time of the escort.
The police have already announced that those detained in the Czech Republic face charges of participation in an organized criminal group, fraud and unauthorized access to a computer system and information carrier.
The Czech police have already charged 17 people in the case, three of whom have been taken into custody by the court. They face up to ten years in prison. The Ukrainian police arrested 17 Ukrainians during an operation coordinated with the Czech police. According to the Ukrainian police, a forty-year-old Ukrainian organized the fraud.
The call center was based in Odessa. The callers were Czechs, their recruitment in the Czech Republic was handled by a fifty-year-old Czech woman. The callers pretended to be employees of the Czech National Bank. They claimed that their account had been hacked and that they needed to transfer their savings to a so-called rescue account. In some cases, they tricked victims into installing a remote administration program, thereby gaining unlimited access to their online banking. The defrauded lost not only their savings, but also the money from the loans, which they seem to have applied for themselves. The accused mostly transferred money from the accounts of the victims to the accounts of mainly Ukrainians living in the Czech Republic, who in turn withdrew the money from ATMs and passed it on to other people.
According to the police, from October 2022 to October 2023, the group committed over 150 frauds with a loss of almost 30 million crowns. Of this, over 22 million crowns is complete damage, the rest is damage in the trial or preparation stage. The police assume that they will still prove hundreds of frauds to the accused.
