Albanian authorities announced the capture of an organized criminal group that had put up a fraudulent scheme focused on electronic transactions, bringing in around 4 million euros in two years.
Through a statement for the press, the Prosecution and State Police said that 4 citizens were arrested – 2 of whom living in Albania but of African ethnicity – and 8 others are now wanted.
Donald Anu, 34 from Cameroon, (also known as Ugochukwu Emmanuel Emereibenu);
Marie Goufan, 31 from Cameroon, residing in Tirana;
Fatbardh Danja, 40 residing in Tirana;
Xhentil Kupe, 54 residing in Tirana.
Companies that have been confirmed to have become victims of this scam are located in 9 different countries, amongst which England, Switzerland, Belgium, Turkey and the US.
This group is suspected to have used the scamming method known as ‘phishing’, retrying data from the email correspondences of these different companies, after which they have identified several financial transactions.
After, the group reproduced the companies’ emails and approached their clients with a request to move their payments to a new account, which is controlled by the criminals.
“After the transactions get transferred into these new accounts, they would be immediately withdrawn and sent to other countries,” – said authorities.
Investigation on this group started back in 2020. Police had been able to block the assets of those arrests including 1 car, 5 computers, 11 cellphones, 20 SIM cards, 8 credit cards, 9 memory cards and a series of documents, that links the group to these criminal activities.
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