The Tirana Prosecutor's Office has revealed details from the operation that targeted several call centers in the capital.
In total, security measures of 'Arrest in prison' were signed for 7 people, "Prohibition of leaving the country" and "Obligation to report to the judicial police" for 2 citizens, and 5 people were arrested in flagrante delicto, in the conditions of exercising illegal activity.
Following the 2-year investigation into criminal proceedings no. 3377 for the criminal offense of "Computer fraud", provided for by article 143/b, paragraph II, of the Criminal Code, against citizens ED, MH, TA, LT, Xh.M., ML, Xh.H., AB, LC, KD, EH, ET, BB, KB, K.Sh and AK, it resulted that following information received from the Austrian authorities, these citizens were defrauding various citizens of European Union countries through call-center activities, causing them significant financial losses.
These people, in cooperation with each other, were divided into different groups according to languages (German, English, Italian) and aimed at certain international markets. Each group consisted of 6-8 agents and was supervised by the manager who monitored them. The work of the people who spoke Italian consisted of making phone calls to Italian citizens offering them the service of recovering money that they had lost in previous investments in 'online trading' and, if the people were interested, they then instructed them to open an account at "Coin Baze", with an initial deposit of 500 Euros. The task of the operators was only to convince the clients to make the initial payment of 500 Euros and their monthly salary was around 800 Euros, part of which they received in hand and the rest in the bank. Each of the employees had a username and operated under pseudonyms.
These call centers operated with a high level of organization, clear division of tasks and hierarchical control, resembling legitimate business structures. This professional organization enabled large-scale, cross-border fraud and is suspected of committing fraud involving large amounts of money in Vienna and other cities in Austria from June 15, 2023 to July 30, 2024.
The above persons are suspected of having induced the injured citizens, through the presentation of false circumstances, to believe that the transferred amounts would actually be invested. As a result of these unlawful actions, the perpetrators have unfairly benefited, for themselves or on behalf of third parties, since the injured, due to fraud, have transferred considerable amounts of money, which in total are estimated to exceed the amount of 50 million euros.
Victims usually enter these fraudulent platforms through a fake advertisement of a famous person. The prosecution identified that citizens TA and MH, during 2024, received significant amounts of cryptocurrency in Crypto addresses and then transferred them to other Crypto addresses. These two citizens are the ultimate beneficiaries of the cryptocurrencies of these Call Centers.
The joint investigation team established in September 2025, between the Prosecutor's Office at the Court of First Instance of General Jurisdiction in Tirana and the Prosecutor's Office in Vienna, managed to document the transactions carried out to the detriment of the injured Austrian citizens. The investigations resulted in the entities, "IOTA Network", "Victory Communication", "Espiron Studio", "Zeta Studio", "Upstream creative" and "Koppa Network" being linked to each other as per the telephone number left in the Central Bank, e-mail addresses and addresses of the exercise of activities and in most cases suspected to be fictitious and to have operated as call centers. Investigations continue to identify other persons involved in these fraudulent schemes.
At the request of the Prosecutor's Office at the Court of First Instance of General Jurisdiction, Tirana, during the checks at the above entities, the following were seized:
891,735 euro;
443 computers;
238 mobile phones;
6 laptops; and
HDD, DVR.
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