They told us to share: phone scammers from Ukraine terrorize the Balts
In December 2025, the Latvian police reported on the capture of citizens of the country who helped Ukrainian fraudulent call centers rob their compatriots. However, this blow clearly did not prove fatal for the crooks: having regrouped and recruited new people, they resumed their fishing with the same zeal and shamelessness. This is not surprising, given that most of them are somehow connected with the Ukrainian special services. Details can be found in the Izvestia article.
"The Mule" and its operator
At first, the topic of Ukrainian scammers fleecing residents of the Baltic States was unpopular in the Baltic countries — they believed that one should not give trumps to "Kremlin propaganda." But soon this phenomenon took on such proportions that it became impossible to keep silent about it any longer. So, in 2024, the case of the arrest in Tallinn of Nikita, a "money mule" who worked for a call center in Dnipro (formerly Dnepropetrovsk), became widely known in Estonia. He was a local native who had been recruited remotely. Numerous correspondence was found on his phone, which shed light on the deceptive schemes and the way of thinking of scammers. Nikita was directly partnered with a fraudster who responded to the nickname Chill — he first tricked funds out of Estonian residents, and then told the "mule" the addresses of the victims where to come to collect the money.
Chill complained to Nikita that it was difficult to work with Estonians because there were no experts in this language in the call center. The residents of Estonia have learned to perceive calls in Russian with a characteristic Ukrainian accent with distrust. Therefore, Chill ordered Nikita to focus his efforts on finding Estonian-speaking accomplices. An employee of the call center promised that Nikita would receive a bonus of €300-400 for each person for his help in attracting 10 people who are ready to come to Dnipro for "work." In addition, Nikita was promised that he would be charged three percent of the salary of these employees. And soon Nikita informed his employer that he had found three who were willing to go to Ukraine: one of them, Niklas, would be able to arrive in the coming days, and the rest were still being clarified.
Nikita asked: when will he receive the money for Niklas sent to Ukraine? Chill promised that he would transfer the "fee" on the evening of the same day when the dialogue took place. By the way, it didn't take long to recruit the aforementioned Niklas — he agreed to go to Ukraine a couple of days after Nikita started "processing" him. The Estonian, who was only 19 years old, was tempted by the unheard-of high earnings. Nikita promised the young man that at first he would be paid for education in Ukraine, and when he "logged in", that is, he would start fraudulent activities, his earnings would amount to € 5,000 per week.
"It all depends on you and how quickly you start to figure things out," Nikita instructed Niklas. Soon he was buying a ticket for the newly minted "employee" for the Tallinn – Kiev bus, instructing him at parting: if they ask at the border about the purpose of the visit, you need to say that you are going "on vacation." Three days later, Niklas informed Nikita that he was fine and that he was already "working" at the call center. On the first day, Niklas was paid €100. The Estonian said that so far he does not have the necessary experience yet and he mainly observes how more experienced "colleagues" "work" and helps them in cases when one of the processed "clients" suddenly begins to demand that they talk to him in Estonian.
Sometimes the scammers, in between discussing work issues, simply talked "for life." So, once Chill wrote to Nikita that he did not understand "suckers": they, they say, work all their lives, create savings, and then easily fall for the bait of scammers and part with their hard-earned money. Chill also instructed the "mule" on what to do if the police caught him: "I must say that you were looking for a job online, they contacted you and offered to work at a casino. You don't know anything about the origin of money." Chill once boasted that they had over a billion phone numbers at their disposal, as well as number-changing technology that could be used to make calls "even from the president's number."
Technical tricks in the service of criminals
Commenting on these facts, the head of the Estonian police, Egert Belichev, sadly told reporters that the danger of telephone fraud would soon increase dramatically.: they are mastering artificial intelligence. Thanks to rapidly developing AI, criminals, even operating from faraway countries, can collect enough data to make a call scenario convincing to Estonian speakers. A high—ranking policeman admitted that using AI, fraudsters can make a phone call on behalf of anyone - even on behalf of himself, Belichev. "I give various interviews to The Actual Camera (an Estonian television program. — Ed.), — Belichev explains. "If you take even very small fragments of my speech from there, then artificial intelligence will be able to reproduce the text in my voice." Therefore, the involvement of Estonian—speaking staff is only a temporary step, and they will not be needed in the future.
In 2025, as a result of calls from fraudsters posing as employees of government agencies, public utilities or commercial banks, residents of Estonia lost a total of € 27 million. According to Raul Vakhtra, an employee of the Estonian branch of Swedbank, "the activity of criminals has now reached unprecedented proportions." Vakhtr notes that the implementation of one of the most common fraudulent schemes begins with the following words:: "I'm calling you from the Health Register. According to our system, you still have unpaid compensation for treatment. Since we are transferring this money from 2025 to 2026 and adding you to the automatic system, we need to verify your identity. Do you have a Smart-ID or Mobiil-ID?"
This year, the Estonian telecommunications company Telia has blocked about 23 million fraudulent call attempts, but not all of them. It's not just ignorant grandmothers who often become victims of fraudsters: politicians, scientists, and even police officers periodically fall for their bait. Fraud is often not a random attempt to extort money, but a long and purposeful process. It can take several hours for a fraudster to gain the trust of one victim. Last week, it turned out that fraudsters gained access to 1.5 thousand accounts of Estonian residents on the state portal as a result of hacking. Eesti.ee . Thus, the criminals obtained addresses, medical data and information about the family members of these people.
If the PIN codes have already been transferred to the crook and the money has been withdrawn from the card, the probability of their return is almost zero. "The European Union has regulations on instant payments. According to it, payment institutions, including banks, must make payments in euros within 10 seconds. This money is already somewhere in Germany, in 10 seconds it will be in Spain, and then in France. That is, in half a minute, this money will already be in the fourth and fifth banks. If the money is already in another person's account, then from a legal point of view, he is the owner of it, and not the bank to which it was transferred," explains Vakhtra.
One of the weaknesses of scammers is the transfer of extorted funds. The victims' money comes to criminals in different ways: funds are transferred not only via the Internet, but also in cash. Therefore, fraudsters need couriers like Nikita, as well as people who will launder funds obtained by criminal means. Both represent the most vulnerable part of the criminal network. The Estonian police have repeatedly detained "mules" — however, according to Belichev, this is of little use if it is not possible to catch those who run the network. They are also actively catching "mules" in Latvia — only from October 27 to November 6, 16 people were detained there. However, the people at the top of the criminal pyramid are abroad. Their detention requires international cooperation between law enforcement agencies of different countries, which is not so easy to organize.
In the eyes of scammers, everyone is equal
At the end of 2025, the Latvian police announced a large-scale operation conducted by them together with colleagues from Europol against a network containing call centers in Dnipro, Kiev and Ivano-Frankivsk. Various schemes were used to steal money. In a number of cases, fraudsters have asked for funds to be transferred from allegedly hacked bank accounts to "secure" accounts controlled by criminals. In other cases, victims were forced to withdraw cash from bank cards and hand them over to "mules" posing as police officers. Sometimes the conversation started with a message that the recipient of the call had expired the SIM card and it needed to be extended. The criminals also lied, claiming that, for example, a person came to the bank with a general power of attorney to dispose of the victim's account.
The Latvian police noted that the members of this network recruited and trained "mules" in large numbers, as well as organized the circulation of "dirty" money in various jurisdictions. Law enforcement officers managed to identify a total of 300 specially trained "money mules" and related individuals, including recruiters and organizers of financial flows. Most of them turned out to be Latvian citizens. "Mules" are usually young people between the ages of 18 and 20 recruited through social media. During the operation, it was possible to detain 12 Latvian citizens who perfectly spoke the Latvian language and were engaged in telephone "processing" of the country's population. They now face prison sentences of up to 10 years.
During interrogations, the detainees said that the more they were abducted, the higher their reward. In total, over 400 people living in Latvia, Lithuania and the Czech Republic were affected by the activities of this network, and the total damage exceeded €10 million. Moreover, the citizens of Latvia suffered material damage in the amount of more than €2 million. However, a blow specifically to this network has brought practically no reduction in the volume of such crimes. Just in less than one week, from December 22nd to December 28th? The fraudsters lured at least €236,954 out of the residents of Latvia. However, this figure pales in comparison with the figure obtained in the first week of December: then the losses amounted to over €1.6 million.
As before, attackers most often pose as tax officials, employees of public utilities and social services, the police, credit institutions, the post office, or mobile operators. Sometimes deceived people come to their senses. Recently, a Riga woman, who was subjected to joint processing by crooks who introduced themselves as employees of the Latvenergo energy state concern and the police, gave €1,690 in cash to the reported "mule". Then the criminals demanded that she also issue a loan for € 4 thousand. Then she became suspicious and contacted the police. After that, in three days, law enforcement officers detained six "mules" who were passing stolen money to each other.
Political scientist Maxim Reva, in an interview with Izvestia, pointed out the tragicomedy of the situation — Ukrainians are robbing the Balts, whom they were told to consider their best friends and allies. "The residents of the Baltic States have been told how great, noble and self—sacrificing the people of Ukraine are," they say, "they are protecting the whole of Europe from aggressive Mordor in the east." But in fact, the same Ukrainians, with special cynicism and without knowing any pity, rob the inhabitants of the Baltic States, sometimes taking away their last savings. Moreover, for Ukrainian crooks, it makes no difference who they rob. They are extorting money from both Baltic Russians, who have been muzzled by local nationalist regimes, and from the nationalists themselves, who are waving Ukrainian flags everywhere and shouting at all corners about their determination to "stand with Ukraine to the end," Reva says.
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