For several months, several European countries (Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Finland and Belgium) have been running an online fraud campaign in which thieves impersonate people at the bank, call customers and force them to transfer their money “to a secure account” , warns the IGPR. Currently, no such cases have been recorded in Romania.

Victims are informed that as a result of cyber-attacks their bank accounts have become vulnerable and they must urgently transfer the available balance to a protected bank account, otherwise there is a risk of losing the sums of money in these accounts.

In this way, thieves convince the victims, usually the elderly or people with poor financial education, to transfer money to bank accounts under their control, opened in the same bank, from where the amounts are successively transferred and converted into cryptocurrency, in order to complicate the identification of the suspects.

This type of deception is known to law enforcement as “phone number spoofing.”

If you receive such unsolicited phone calls, the IGPR recommends that you do not answer the phone calls, do not view the links or attachments sent, and contact the nearest police station.

Until now, the Romanian police have not been notified of any actions with this mode of operation, this notification has the role of informing and preventing citizens.