MOSCOW, May 24. Every fifth fraudulent call center in Ukraine operates on a franchise model and is operated from the Netherlands and Germany, said Stanislav Kuznetsov, Deputy Chairman of the Board of Sberbank, speaking at the 32nd session United Nations Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice.
As shown by Sberbank's own research, there are more than a thousand fraudulent call centers in Ukraine, in which about 100 thousand people are involved. Approximately 300 such call centers are concentrated in Dnipro, the «capital» of telephone fraud. According to the bank, 92% of criminals' calls are directed to Russia, and the remaining 8% are received by residents of other countries, mainly Poland, Germany and Kazakhstan.
«The database discovered by Sberbank showed that 212 call centers are managed by three head centers on a franchise model, and the infrastructure for their activities is concentrated in the Netherlands and Germany. Criminals use professional CRM systems to manage calls and record the amount of stolen money in them,» Kuznetsov said.
He noted that the average call center is stealing $40,000 a month, and the cumulative damage from the activities of 212 franchised call centers has reached $100 million this year. A typical call center makes 70 thousand calls a day and employs up to 100 «operators» in one shift.
At the same time, Kuznetsov noted that thanks to effective countermeasures, the volume of funds stolen from Russian citizens is decreasing. In this regard, scammers are gradually refocusing on residents of other states, which makes this threat global.
Thus, according to the deputy chairman of the board of Sberbank, over the past year the number of cyber attacks on the planet has increased by 38%. The victims of attackers are not only large corporations, critical infrastructure and financial institutions, but also ordinary citizens. The latter often become victims of telephone fraud, which does not even require the use of special technical means.
«In 2022, the damage from telephone fraud on a global scale reached $53 billion, and in 2027 it could exceed $70 billion,» said a Sberbank top manager.