In Ukraine one of the largest operations took place against fraudulent call centers, and once again became one of the main epicenters Dnepr.
According to the summary distributed following the operation, law enforcement officers carried out 411 searches and ceased operations 94 scam call centers. However, against the backdrop of estimates of the scale of the entire criminal industry, these figures may be just the tip of the iceberg.
Briefly about the main thing
- according to the preliminary report, 411 searches were carried out and 94 fraudulent call centers were identified;
- Almost 1,800 equipped workplaces were discovered;
- thousands of computers, phones and SIM cards, cars, crypto wallets, bank cards and large sums of cash were seized;
- international researchers estimate the number of people employed in the Ukrainian scam center industry at approximately 60 thousand people;
- Some journalistic estimates indicate up to 100 thousand employees;
- the industry’s potential turnover is estimated at up to $1 billion per month;
- international investigations confirm the work of Ukrainian call centers against citizens of EU countries;
- Athens News has previously written repeatedly about such networks and calls to residents of Greece;
- A separate controversial issue remains the Russian direction and the version of unspoken tolerance towards centers that worked primarily against citizens of the Russian Federation.
Contents
- What was found during the operation
- Industry, not a few underground offices
- Why does the Dnieper constantly pop up?
- Europe has been under attack for a long time
- Why does this directly concern Greece?
- Russian direction
- Corruption, security forces and the “roof” version
- 60%, 40% or 10–15%: why the numbers differ
- What does the current operation show?
- Editorial conclusion
What was found during the operation
According to the report received by the editorial office and distributed in the Ukrainian information space, during the operation 411 searches.
Reported cessation of activity 94 scam call centers, which were equipped 1794 jobs.
Law enforcement officers, according to the same data, seized:
- 3336 units of computer equipment;
- 1346 mobile phones;
- more 5200 SIM cards;
- 20 cryptocurrency wallets;
- 90 bank cards;
- 22 cars;
- about US$2 million;
- about 64 thousand euros;
- cash in hryvnia;
- about 1 kg bank gold.
It is also reported that 26 participants in the activity were charged with suspicion.
At the time of preparation of the material, some of these figures still require final verification with the full official summary. However, the new wave of large-scale searches in Dnieper and the Dnepropetrovsk region is confirmed by Ukrainian sources.
Moreover, the current operation is far from the first. Ukrainian and European law enforcement agencies have regularly reported the liquidation of fraudulent “offices” in recent years, but the centers themselves continue to reappear.
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Industry, not a few underground offices
Just a few years ago, Ukrainian fraudulent call centers often presented themselves as separate groups of people who rented an office and called gullible citizens. Today, such a description looks hopelessly outdated.
Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC) in a study of the international industry of scam centers, he separately examines the situation in Ukraine.
According to researchers’ estimates, the Ukrainian fraudulent call center industry may employ about 60 thousand people. In the journalistic community, there are also higher ratings, up to 100 thousand employees, however, this figure should be taken as an estimate.
Individual researchers and their sources estimate the potential turnover of the entire industry to be up to $1 billion per month.
Of course, we are not talking about financial statements, where you can open a table and see the line “telephone fraud: income for July.” A significant part of the funds passes through fake bank accounts, cryptocurrencies, cash payments and networks of so-called “drops”.
But even if the actual amounts are lower than the maximum estimates, the scale of the business remains enormous.
Why does the Dnieper constantly pop up?
For many years, one of the main centers of this industry has been called Dnepr.
Ukrainian journalists and former employees of similar structures have repeatedly described the city as one of the largest centers of fraudulent “offices.”
In 2025 alone, the prosecutor’s office of the Dnepropetrovsk region reported the cessation of the activities of dozens of such centers.
Former employees told journalists about working with databases of citizens of Russia, Kazakhstan, the Caucasus and Europe.
An employee may make hundreds of calls a day. In some schemes, they try to scare a potential victim: they report a hacked bank card, a suspicious transfer, or an attempt to steal money.
Other schemes use the opposite tactic: scammers spend weeks building trust, offering investments, cryptocurrency trading, or assistance with returning previously lost funds.
A large “office” differs little from an ordinary commercial company. HR managers, mentors, team leaders, IT specialists, analysts, translators, internal security officers and money withdrawal specialists can work there.
Some centers, according to former employees, even check new employees for polygraph.
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Europe has been under attack for a long time
The idea that Ukrainian call centers deal only with Russian citizens is not supported by materials from international criminal investigations.
In December 2025 Eurojust announced the liquidation of a network that operated call centers in Dnieper, Kyiv and Ivano-Frankivsk.
The investigation established more 400 victims in European countries, and the known damage exceeded 10 million euros.
The operators posed as bank or police employees, informed customers about allegedly hacked accounts and convinced them to transfer money to “safe accounts” controlled by the criminals.
In February 2026, Eurojust coordinated another operation against three fraudulent centers in Dnipro. 11 people were detained, dozens of searches were carried out, cash, cryptocurrency assets and expensive cars were seized.
In May 2026, with international coordination, another center in Kharkov, which was working against European clients, was closed.
Thus, Ukrainian fraudulent networks have long turned into transnational criminal business, and not exclusively an internal or Russian-Ukrainian problem.
Why does this directly concern Greece?
For readers of the Athens News, this story has a very practical significance: Greek residents are also victims of international telephone and investment fraud networks.
In June 2026, we talked in detail about how how Ukrainian call centers rob Greek residents.
That material examined international investigations of Eurojust, Ukrainian “offices”, Dnieper and criminal groups associated with this business.
Moreover, the editors recorded the first such cases much earlier.
Back in 2023, the Athens News faced calls from Russian-speaking scammers to residents of Greece.
The caller introduced himself as an employee of the Russian-speaking support of Eurobank. However, several clarifying questions about Greek banking and tax realities quickly showed that this “specialist” had nothing to do with Eurobank.
We also talked about international fraudulent network with call centers in Sofia and Belgrade, clients in Germany and a Ukrainian trace.
The geography of such networks has long become arbitrary. The operator may be physically located in Dnepr, Sofia, Belgrade or another country, the phone number may look Greek, and the stolen money in a few minutes will end up in an account or crypto wallet in a completely different jurisdiction.
Russian direction: a separate reality
But there is another part of this story that is much more difficult to talk about: call centers that work exclusively or predominantly against Russian citizens.
After February 2022, a phenomenon emerged in this environment that international researchers describe as “patriotic fraud”.
The owners and employees of some “offices” presented work against Russians as a kind of economic war: if money is taken from citizens of the enemy state, then the activity itself supposedly receives moral justification.
Ukrainian journalists have repeatedly talked with former employees of such centers. The publications featured large databases of Russian citizens and departments focused exclusively on this market.
Over the years, Russian banks and law enforcement agencies have argued that a significant part of telephone fraud against Russian citizens is related specifically to the infrastructure in Ukraine.
These statements must be taken with reservations, since Russia is a party to the armed conflict. However, it is also impossible to completely attribute them to propaganda: the existence of large Russian-language departments of Ukrainian scam centers is also confirmed by Ukrainian journalistic investigations.
Corruption, security forces and the “roof” version
Here comes the most inconvenient question: Can a criminal industry with tens of thousands of employees, hundreds of offices and huge turnover exist for years without patronage?
GI-TOC research indicates that one of the factors that allows scammers to scale is corruption and political or law enforcement protection.
In relation to the Ukrainian market, researchers also describe connections of part of the industry with organized crime groups and corrupt protection mechanisms.
This does not prove the existence of a single command from above, and certainly does not mean that government agencies centrally manage the fraudulent centers.
However, it is becoming increasingly difficult to imagine a huge industry as hundreds of completely independent rooms with telephones and computers that, by some miracle, remain invisible to the state for years.
The role remains particularly controversial SBU.
On the one hand, the Security Service of Ukraine itself participates in international operations against fraudulent call centers. Eurojust listed Ukrainian units of the SBU among the participants in investigations of centers that worked against European citizens.
On the other hand, another version has been circulating in the journalistic community and among former participants in this business for several years: offices that specialized exclusively in Russian citizens could enjoy significantly greater tolerance from Ukrainian security forces than centers operating in Ukraine or EU countries.
The editors of Athens News also have similar information from journalistic sources.
We are not talking about an officially confirmed SBU program. Naturally, no one has published such a document.
However, the testimony of former employees of the “offices”, journalistic investigations and more general data on the corrupt protection of this industry allow us to consider version of unspoken tolerance towards the Russian direction as worthy of attention.
A separate issue relates to reports that some of the funds received from operations against Russian citizens were subsequently used for Ukrainian military or related purposes.
Here it is necessary to distinguish between two completely different statements. Money from Russian government agencies or defense-related enterprises is one thing. The funds of ordinary Russian citizens who lost their savings after fraudulent calls are completely different.
In the journalistic community, there is information about cases when these two categories were actually mixed in the public description: the seizure or receipt of “Russian money” was reported, but the origin of the funds from specific citizens was not disclosed in detail.
It is currently impossible to independently confirm the existence of a systemic scheme in which money fraudulently stolen from Russian citizens was centrally transferred to Ukrainian structures.
Editorial disclaimer: There is no public document proving that the SBU has officially authorized the operation of fraudulent call centers against Russian citizens. Therefore, we are talking about a version of unspoken tolerance or patronage of certain areas, based on journalistic sources, testimonies of market participants and general information about the corruption protection of the industry.
60%, 40% or 10–15%: why the numbers differ
In the Ukrainian, Russian and international journalistic environment there is an estimate according to which approximately 60% of Ukrainian fraudulent call centers were focused on Russia, and about 40% worked in Ukraine, Europe and other countries.
The editors have encountered a similar proportion in various sources and testimonies of people familiar with the work of the “offices.”
However, it cannot be used as accurate government statistics.
In some international studies, a significantly lower assessment of the Russian direction was given – order 10–15% for a certain period of 2022–2023.
The contradiction may be explained by the fact that different sources count completely different indicators: the number of employees, offices, calls, victims or the amount of stolen money.
Moreover, the market structure changed rapidly after the outbreak of the war.
Some Russian-speaking units switched to Kazakhstan, the Caucasus countries, Central Europe and the Russian-speaking diaspora.
A European client often represents a much more attractive target for fraudsters: one successful scheme with fictitious investments can bring in tens or hundreds of thousands of euros.
Therefore, it is more correct to talk not about the 60/40 formula proven for the entire industry, but about the presence a large Russian segment, the size of which is estimated by different sources in completely different ways.
What does the current operation show?
That is why the current 411 searches are of particular interest.
The sheer number of closed “offices” does not yet answer the main question: For citizens of which countries did they work?
If among the 94 centers there are predominantly structures focused on citizens of Ukraine, the EU and other countries, and the Russian segment is practically not affected, the version of selective treatment will receive additional arguments.
If investigations show that large centers that worked against Russian citizens were simultaneously liquidated, this, on the contrary, will become an argument against such a version.
There is no complete picture yet.
But the infrastructure itself, discovered during the operation, already shows the scale of the business: almost 1800 jobs, thousands of computers and phones, more than five thousand SIM cards, crypto wallets, bank cards, cars, cash and gold.
These are no longer just a few phone scammers.
These are full-fledged commercial structures, only they become goods trust, fear and victims’ bank accounts.
Why one raid is not enough
International researchers draw attention to a fundamental problem: the liquidation of individual offices in itself almost does not destroy the market.
Computers can be purchased again. Rent a room in a week in a nearby business center. Replace SIM cards. Recruit employees through Telegram, social networks and job sites.
Financial flows can be redirected through new bank accounts, cryptocurrency addresses and networks of intermediaries.
The real blow to the industry begins only when the investigation rises above the operators with telephone headsets and establishes real network owners, organizers, financial channels, criminal intermediaries and those who provide protection.
That is why the number of suspects is no less interesting than the number of seized equipment.
If in an operation that affected 94 centers and almost 1,800 jobs, suspicions are received only 26 people, the question naturally arises: who were the real organizers of the business and how many of them came to the attention of the investigation?
Editorial conclusion
The new operation is really big. Ukrainian law enforcement agencies are closing fraudulent centers working against citizens of Ukraine and other countries, and the SBU is participating in a number of international investigations together with European partners.
But the story doesn’t end there.
International research and criminal cases show that Ukraine has developed one of the most visible ecosystems of fraudulent call centers in Europe.
Tens of thousands of workers, organized criminal networks, cryptocurrency, banking infrastructure, cross-border payments, professional recruiting and corruption protection allow us to talk about not just a surge in crime, but about separate criminal industry.
For Greece this topic is especially important. Residents of the country, including Russian speakers, are becoming victims of international telephone and investment scams. At the same time, the operator’s physical location thousands of kilometers from Athens has not stopped him from calling with a number that looks Greek, or from introducing himself as an employee of a local bank.
The main question after the current operation: not how many computers were taken out of the premises, but which networks were destroyed, who was their real owner, where the money went and what areas of work law enforcement officers chose not to notice. The answers to these questions will show whether there is really a systemic fight against the criminal industry or whether individual segments of it are only periodically destroyed.
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