"The Estonian police have been working closely with Ukraine for years to combat international fraud," said Hannes Kelt, head of the cyber and economic crimes unit at the PPA's North Prefecture. "The Ukrainian cyber police have also visited Estonia to exchange information with our investigators and find common ways of preventing fraud."

According to Estonian Minister of the Interior Igor Taro (Eesti 200), the Ukrainian authorities are keen to cooperate with Estonia. "However, in order for them to deal with a specific case of fraud, there must be clear evidence linking that fraud to Ukraine," Taro said.

"We must understand that since Ukraine's main focus is still on defending itself against Russian attack, this cooperation may not always be the fastest. But at the same time, that is completely understandable," Estonian State Prosecutor Jürgen Hüva said.

Hüva also recalled one joint case which was halted due to Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

"In 2021, we set up a joint investigation team with the Ukrainians to dismantle a large call center operation, and just before the invasion, we were able to arrest the main suspect. But unfortunately, the war ruined those plans, and for understandable reasons, we did not send our people there."

Kelt admitted that catching those responsible for telephone fraud is challenging, because although some call centers are located in Ukraine, fraudulent calls are also made from other countries.

The main organizers may also be in a third country, which means these are essentially global organized crime cases.

"The network of fraudsters is international and multi-layered, and they do not physically operate in one place or target only the residents of a specific country. Call centers, organizers of  operations and those who move the money are often located in different countries, making it difficult to link fraud to one specific location," Kelt said.

Hüva noted that although the leaders of some of the fraud schemes often have ties to Ukraine, they may be living elsewhere.

"They may have a Ukrainian background – either in terms of citizenship or in some other form – but in reality, their financial capabilities allow them to live anywhere in the world and travel freely. This also complicates the situation," Hüva explained.

"In the case of large operations, we are talking not about weeks, but years of cooperation. On top of that, our cooperation with other countries is often hampered by the fact that their domestic laws are significantly different from ours or that bureaucratic processes take a long time," Kelt added.

Successful operation in Latvia

"Last October, in cooperation with the Latvian and Austrian police, Europol, and Eurojust, we carried out an operation that led to the arrest of a group organizing fraud in Latvia. The group had created an extensive SIM box structure in Latvia, which enabled criminals to commit fraud across Europe, including in Estonia," Kelt explained.

Hüva specified that while such criminal organizations often use virtual servers and store the data necessary for fraud in the cloud, the organization caught in Latvia had purchased its own servers, which were seized during the search and brought to Estonia.

Seizing servers a bigger blow to fraudsters

Hüva explained that criminals often store a large portion of their data on virtual servers across Europe, which makes it possible to access them and disable their networks.

"We have taken down these servers through searches and collected the data in Estonia, which gives us the opportunity to map the organization and identify the people behind it," the state prosecutor said.

"It's just a bit of a roundabout way to go and takes more time. But at the same time, it's not impossible," he added.

According to the state prosecutor, taking down the servers or the databases stored on them also hinders the activities of criminal networks, which then use this data for fraud.

"If we eliminate the physical form of the [call center] office and take these computers with us, the data will still remain on the servers, so they just need to find a new location, establish a connection, and they can continue their operations," Hüva pointed out.

"But if we take the data away from them, that presumably could disrupt their daily operations much more effectively," he said.

Fraudsters quickly caught in Estonia

Hüva also said those involved in committing telephone fraud in Estonia are usually caught relatively quickly.

"If these call centers were all here in Estonia, we would have shut them all down by now," he said.

"We are able to respond very quickly to everything that happens here and then bring these individuals to justice. The problem is that, since this is an attractive opportunity for some to make money fast, there are simply a lot of them [willing participants]."

"However, the fact is that if they operate here in Estonia, then we will catch up with them in a fairly short time and bring them to justice," Hüva warned.

"Still, these are just lower-level players. As long as the leadership is still operating, removing these lower-level players will not have any immediate effect, because they (the network leaders – ed.) will simply bring in new ones. The most important thing is to attack the head, taking it down for good, which could then potentially paralyze the entire organization," the state prosecutor emphasized.

 In recent years, a number of different telephone scams have attracted considerable media attention in Estonia, with criminals defrauding their victims of tens of millions of euros. Such scams are often associated with call centers operating in Ukraine.

However, Hüva pointed out that Estonia is definitely not the main target country for these operations.

"There is a logical reason for this – Estonia has a population of only 1.3 million people, which is clearly too small a market for them to sustain their activities. They need a larger population to defraud and get their hands on their money. Estonia is clearly not the primary target for this."

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