This summer, thousands of people in Estonia received automated calls claiming that their mobile service contracts needed to be updated or changed, according to a press release.

During the call, recipients were asked to press one on their phone's keypad to allegedly speak with their mobile service operator. The call was then redirected instead to a scammer operating in a foreign call center, and in the course of the conversation, victims were asked to provide their personal identification code (isikukood) and Smart-ID PIN numbers.

Soon afterward, the victims discovered that money transfers had been made to their bank accounts, and thereafter their bank accounts were emptied, with all funds transferred to foreign bank accounts. Quick loans were taken out in the victims' names as well.

Urmet Tambre, head of the Criminal Department at the PPA's North Prefecture, said that the chief organizers of these crimes operate abroad, but are increasingly recruiting local residents to help conduct their scams.

"Three people were caught in Estonia in August that had been previously recruited by foreign criminals," Tambre explained. "They had also been sent equipment and were being instructed."

According to police, the three individuals' actions were directed from a foreign call center. They had been recruited via the Telegram app and offered €80 a day in pay; likewise paid for was rent on the space where they worked.

"We work together with mobile service providers, and in this case as well, we received information in early August that there had been an unusual spike in calls made with phone cards under one particular base station," the police official said. "A few days later, we identified that a room was being rented at a Mustamäe hostel in Tallinn where the perpetrators were operating."

Recovered during searches by criminal police were technical equipment that allowed dozens of automated scam calls to be made simultaneously, as well as a computer, routers and SIM cards from a service provider. The three individuals were detained as suspects the same day.

"Organized criminal groups are actively trying to recruit locals as extensions, in order to reduce the risk of getting caught themselves," Tambre explained.

"Don't accept illegal job offers through messaging apps," he emphasized. "Sooner or later, these illegal jobs promising big profits will lead to criminal proceedings."

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