Scope of SIM card swap fraud being investigated

Electronic crimes officers have arrested nine suspects in connection with three cases of internet banking fraud via swapped SIM cards and are investigating their possible involvement in another two.

Officers at the Dionysos police station in northern Athens were put on the gang’s trail after 125,000 euros mysteriously went missing from the account of a resident, in the same March period that a similar complaint was reported on the island of Mytilene.

Kathimerini spoke with one of the gang’s victims, a man from Thiva, who said that 15,000 euros had been siphoned from his bank account, also in March, by an individual who hijacked his banking passwords by getting a new SIM card for his phone number under false pretenses.

Similar cases have since turned up in Crete and in northern Greece.

Police believe there have been at least 40 such cases in recent months, accounting for around 700,000 euros of stolen funds.