Ukrainian and Polish police bust extortion scheme promising to evacuate civilians from Bakhmut

With joint efforts, Ukrainian and Polish law enforcement officers neutralized a transnational criminal group of fraudsters who were extorting money from civilians in frontline regions who wanted to leave the war zone.

The Security Service of Ukraine reports this on Telegram.

"Cyber specialists of the Security Service, together with law enforcement agencies of the Republic of Poland, neutralized a transnational criminal group of fraudsters," the message reads.

Criminals extorted money from residents of the frontline regions of Ukraine who were planning to leave the war zone, including Bakhmut and Vuhledar.

They provided "guarantees" of transportation to safer areas of Ukraine for various monetary sums, with an average cost of 30,000 Ukrainian hryvnias. In particular, they targeted disabled individuals and parents of minor children. This has resulted in over 1.5 million hryvnias being fraudulently obtained.

For this, groups in social networks and popular messengers were used.

Fraudsters took "advance payment" from their clients for 50% of the declared amount. The money was received on bank cards issued to fictitious persons.

After receiving the funds, the dealers stopped communicating with the victims and did not contact them again.

Another "target audience" of fraudsters was men of military age. For a "separate fee," the perpetrators promised conscripts to produce fake documents for going abroad.

As a result of a special operation in different regions of Ukraine, one of the group's organizers was detained. He turned out to be a resident of the Zhytomyr region, who directly contacted clients and offered them "conditions" for evacuation.

According to the investigation, two more Ukrainian citizens, the organizers of the criminal group, are currently in one of the countries of the European Union.

The Security Service employees and European partners are conducting comprehensive measures to detain both criminals and extradite them to Ukraine.

Mobile phones with evidence of illegal activity and ten bank cards with which the perpetrators received money from the victims were found at the residence addresses of the suspects during searches in several regions of Ukraine.

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It should be noted that in March, Ukrainian and Czech law enforcement agencies neutralized a transnational criminal group of fraudsters who stole money from the bank accounts of citizens of the European Union.