Fraudsters in Beirut scam call centre busted

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Scam calls to Germany have been traced back to a call centre in Lebanon as multiple fraudsters were arrested in Beirut on November 7, according to The National. 

It was reported that nine individuals who had been making dubious phone calls impersonating German Police officers were arrested. 

Detectives in Germany found that the Beirut-based call centre’s operator was a member of the Miri clan as well as a German citizen after originally believing that those carrying out the scam operations in question were from Turkey due to a flurry of stories of con-artists phoning up people from the country out of the blue, targeting vulnerable people most notably. 

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The clan is a Lebanese mafia group based in Germany that migrated to the country in the 1980s as refugees. 

Kai Graeber, a prosecutor in Munich, stressed that, “Wherever they (con-artists) go and wherever they hide, they will never be safe,”. 

Most scam call centres are based in India, where agents phone up the English-speaking world, mostly the US and UK, and pretend to be Microsoft technicians and HMRC and/or  Internal Revenue Service (IRS) representatives, which are the most popular phone scams. 

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These scams proved to be successful especially in the past as the fraudsters play on people’s fears and demand that those on the other side of the line act with urgency and if they don’t they threaten them with arrest amongst other harsh consequences.  

American broadcasters have on multiple occasions warned citizens of these phone calls as well as noting that organisations such as Microsoft and the IRS will never cold call as well as ask for immediate action and payment. 

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The National

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