Spanish police arrest 34 alleged cybercriminals for scamming operation

Spanish police arrested 34 alleged cybercriminals accused of finishing up a wide range of on-line scams — seizing firearms, a katana sword, baseball bat and €80,000 within the course of.

Police carried out 16 searches within the provinces of Madrid, Málaga, Huelva, Alicante and Murcia as a part of the operation in opposition to the group, which was introduced on Saturday. The alleged cybercriminals are believed to have carried out scams by e-mail, cellphone and textual content.

Desarticulada una organización felony que realizaba estafas informáticas y disponía de datos de cuatro millones de personas

➡34 detenidos y 16 registros en localidades de las provincias de #Madrid, #Málaga, #Huelva, #Alicante y #Murcia

Esclarecidas más de 1.000… pic.twitter.com/orNV8spcus

— Policía Nacional (@policia) October 21, 2023

Additionally they allegedly perpetrated “son in misery” scams — pressing appeals for monetary assist purportedly from the recipient’s baby or different member of the family — in addition to “manipulation of supply notes from know-how corporations and vishing campaigns pretending to be workers {of electrical} provide corporations.”

They’re believed to have netted about €3 million ($3.2 million). Police additionally discovered a database with stolen info on 4 million folks.

“The investigation started firstly of this yr by specialised brokers of the Central Cybercrime Unit, once they recognized a felony community that illegally accessed databases of assorted monetary and credit score entities, coming into completely different quantities into shopper accounts of cash from the credit score establishment,” the Nationwide Police stated, in a translated assertion. “They then contacted these shoppers informing them that as a consequence of a pc error that they had entered a mortgage and needed to return it.”

Investigators found that the group had allegedly penetrated different “multinational industrial databases,” having access to private info that was used to hold out scams.

The group additionally allegedly bought entry to web sites and applications used to hold out cybercrimes, together with “faux banking web sites, mass message sending applications or cross-databases.”

The operation is simply the most recent effort by Spanish legislation enforcement to crack down on cybercrime and scams. In April, Spanish police arrested a infamous teenage hacker — José Luis Huertas, or “Alcasec” — accused of finishing up a cyberattack on Spain’s nationwide council of the judiciary (CGPJ), which affected different authorities ministries and compromised a whole lot of 1000’s of taxpayer information.

Final December, Spanish police arrested 55 cybercriminals accused of taking up financial institution accounts by SIM swapping.