Police just shut down 94 scam call centres - and the playbook they found is the one calling you

Four hundred and eleven searches in one week. Ukraine's National Police, working with the Security Service, the Prosecutor General's Office and German police, shut down 94 fraudulent call centres and formally named 26 people as suspects. The inventory list reads like a small telecoms company: 3,336 computers, 1,346 phones, 5,238 SIM cards, 90 bank cards, access to 20 cryptocurrency wallets, 22 vehicles, around $2 million in cash plus €64,000 and a kilogram of bank gold. Preliminary estimates put victim losses above $100 million, across Ukraine, Israel, Kazakhstan, EU countries and Central Asia.

What they were actually selling is the useful part. Callers posed as bank staff warning about a suspicious transaction that needed sorting out immediately. Others ran fake investment brokerages and crypto trading platforms, or talked people into taking out loans and reading out their card details. Some walked victims through installing remote-access software so the "bank" could fix things on their computer. A few centres worked recovery scams - ringing people they'd already robbed and offering, for a fee, to get the money back. And some bought and sold lists of victims to other gangs.

Two things in there are worth carrying around. Remote access is the bright line: no real bank and no real Microsoft will ever ask you to install a screen-sharing tool. If that comes up, hang up and dial the number printed on your card. And being scammed once puts you on a list that gets traded, which is exactly why the follow-up call sounds so well-informed - it isn't proof the caller is legitimate, it's proof your details were resold.

If someone did talk their way onto your PC, Tendvane's Safety check looks for remote-access tools and other programs running that you never chose to install, so a bad phone call doesn't leave a door standing open behind it.