The law enforcement agencies of Italy and Albania have long collaborated fruitfully on many fronts in the fight against organized crime. This collaboration is also extended to increasingly frequent cybercrimes.
One example is the brilliant operation conducted to dismantle a criminal business based on telemarketing that had already earned 9 million euros in the first three months of 2023.
The operations were conducted by the Milan Postal Police under the direction of the Milan Public Prosecutor's Office and the Special Prosecutor's Office against Corruption and Organized Crime (S.P.A.K.) in Tirana (with the liaison of the Italian Liaison Magistrate in Albania) in cooperation with the Postal Police and Cybersecurity Service and the Service for International and Police Cooperation - Office of the Security Expert in Albania, together with the Criminal Police Department - Organized Crime Investigation Directorate and Computer Crimes Unit of the Albanian State Police and the National Bureau Investigation (N.B.I.) of the S.P.A.K.
The investigation stemmed from the complaint of a Milanese priest who was harassed by phone calls from call centers that, in insistent and aggressive tones, demanded payment of outstanding bills related to electricity and gas contracts he had never signed.
The Operational Center for Cyber Security (C.O.S.C.) in Milan uncovered the existence of a massive criminal system consisting of two companies in Padua supplying electricity and gas and numerous call centers with offices in Italy and Albania.
the organization specialized in fraudulent activations of energy supply contracts, extortion, and self-laundering of illicit proceeds.
The investigation required the analysis of a massive amount of telematics and banking data and a series of police services on the ground, in Italy and Albania.
Thirty-five targets were searched, including 32 in Italy and 3 in Albania, in the city of Tirana. Targeted were the two operational headquarters of Padua energy companies ,already
sanctioned by the Privacy Guarantor and the Antitrust Authority, 12 call center locations (including 3 in
Albania) and 21 individuals including directors, accountants, consultants and employees of energy companies and call centers.
The criminal mechanism was this: numerous persistent phone calls (made
even early in the morning and late in the evening) were used to collect data from victims,
convinced that they were talking to employees of ARERA (Regulatory Authority for Energy Networks
and Environment) or energy companies with whom they had regular contracts for the
electricity and gas supply.
To collect this data, telephone operators spoke of nonexistent road works that "had severed electrical cables or gas pipes" and because of which
it was necessary to temporarily activate a new contract with a "contracted" operator. If the unfortunate people refused to sign the contracts, the suspects used the data acquired during the phone calls to activate the contract anyway by affixing false signatures at the bottom of the paper documents. In other cases, when the activation procedure required a voice recording, the victim's voice, recorded during the phone call, was artfully manipulated with audio editors or artificial intelligence apps so that the necessary personal data and the various "yeses" in response to questions from the telephone operator in charge of collecting consent could be heard uttered by the unsuspecting user.
The trouble began after a few months, when the victims who, completely
unaware that they had signed a contract with a new energy company, they were receiving payment reminders for unpaid bills.
In several cases established in the course of the investigation, such requests turned into actual
own extortion.
"In the meantime, we'll depower your electricity supply, and if you still don't pay, we'll disconnect your power," said the phony call center operators, who were even more aggressive toward the most vulnerable victims especially elderly people.
The investigation uncovered another thousand additional victims who still did not realize the trap they had unknowingly walked into.
Italian 
Albanian 
English