Money stolen by SMS scammers found in Maltese banks by Spain’s Guardia Civil

101 people have been arrested in Spain by the Guardia Civil following the investigation of SMS scammers who laundered and stashed the proceeds of their crime in Maltese bank accounts.

The SMS fraud ring hauled in over €1 million but only €383,000 has been recovered so far in what was named Operation Paketokas.

Spain’s Civil Guard said investigations into the ring have been ongoing for the last year and they have led investigators to Malta, Belgium, Estonia, France, Italy and Lithuania, “where the detainees had opened bank accounts with the illegally obtained money”, it said in a statement.

“To launder the money, they had a network of mules,” the Spanish authorities said. The mules would take the illicit proceeds and stash them in foreign banks, including in Malta.

The names of particular banks where the money was deposited were not published.

Arrests were made in Madrid and Barcelona, the Spanish authorities said in an official statement.

The scammers, according to Spain’s Civil Guard, obtained victims’ banking details by posing as staff from banks where they had accounts.

The SMSs impersonated bank employees by warning their targets about illegal charges on their bank accounts or that their accounts had been illegally accessed, which, ironically, is exactly what the scammers were trying to do.

“By facilitating access to online banking by clicking on the links [in the SMSs], these people inadvertently authorise the criminal to make transfers and other money transfers.”

When a bank’s security system requires confirmation before proceeding with a customer’s instructions through a security code sent by SMS, “criminal groups engage in conversation with customers posing as real bank employees, easily obtaining the security codes to validate the operation”.

The victims, however, believed they were closing security flaws with their accounts but they were simply authorising the withdrawal of their funds from their accounts. Such communications were usually done outside of banking hours when the banks themselves could not be contacted – often at night or on weekends.

While SMS scams that Maltese have fallen victim to are unfortunately all too common, this particular scam targeted Spanish bank account holders and the proceeds were laundered or stashed away in Malta.

The Spanish authorities did not mention which agency or authority they coordinated with in Malta to trace the bank accounts in question.