The SSU cyber units jointly with the law enforcement agencies of Poland dismantled a transnational criminal group.

The criminals swindled money from residents of frontline regions of Ukraine who planned to leave the combat zone, including towns of Bakhmut and Vuhledar.

For various amounts of money, the fraudsters promised locals to take them to safer regions.

The average cost of such ‘services’ was UAH 30,000.

The offenders mostly deceived disabled people and parents of young children.

For this purpose, they used groups in social networks and popular messengers.

The crooks took a ‘prepayment’ from their clients - 50% of the stated amount, receiving the money to bank cards issued to bogus persons.

After receiving the money, they stopped communicating with the victims.

In this way, the fraudsters cheated the victims out of over UAH 1.5 mln (USD 39,000).

Another ‘target audience’ were men of call-up age. For a ‘fee’, the criminals promised to make fake documents, which would enable the men to cross the border.

As a result of a special operation in different regions of Ukraine, one of the group’s organizers was detained. He is a resident of Zhytomyr region who directly contacted the clients and offered them ‘conditions’ for evacuation.

According to the investigation, another two organizers, also Ukrainian citizens, are currently in one of the EU states.

The SSU and the European partners are acting to detain the suspects and extradite them to Ukraine.

During the searches at the offenders’ homes in several regions of Ukraine, the SSU found:

• mobile phones with evidence of the crime;
• 10 bank cards, to which they received money from the victims.

The detained organizer was served a notice of suspicion under Article 190.3 of the CCU (fraud).

Court is to decide on custody as a measure of restraint. The investigation is ongoing.

The SSU carried out the operation jointly with the National Police under the supervision of Kyiv City Prosecutor’s Office.