According to DW, Investigators teamed up with colleagues from the Balkans and Lebanon in raids set up by months of intense surveillance. Authorities say the operation thwarted over €10 million in damages and led to 21 arrests.
Police in Germany announced on Thursday that they, along with colleagues from Albania, Bosnia, Kosovo and Lebanon, had busted what is thought to have been Europe’s largest scam call center.

In a separate statement, the European police agency Europol said that 12 call centers had been raided on April 18, and that 21 individuals had been arrested in the sting.

Thomas Strobl, interior minister in the southwestern German state of Baden-Württemberg, praised officers for having, “successfully uncovered what is probably the largest call center fraud scheme in Europe.”

Europol said perpetrators would pose as, “close relatives, bank employees, customer service agents or police officers” in the scam, using any number of “manipulation tactics” to “shock and cheat their victims out of their savings.” Those tactics ranged from the threat of pending (fake) criminal penalties or asset seizure in the event of non-payment, to the promise of prizes or pre-paid debit cards.

Police used ‘Operation Pandora’ to surveil scammers in real time
Dubbed “Operation Pandora,” the sting began in Germany in December 2023, after a suspicious bank teller contacted police when a 76-year-old customer from Freiburg sought to hurriedly withdraw €120,000 ($128,232) from her savings account to hand over to a fake police officer.