Moldova Hit by a Fraud Disaster: Why Is PAS Unable to Respond?

Our country is experiencing a genuine boom in telephone and digital fraud, with both the number of victims and the sums stolen increasing several times compared even to last year

Semyon ALBU, RTA: Unfortunately, not only drug trafficking has reached epidemic proportions in our country – the same can be said about telephone fraud. This is not exactly a new problem, but the scale of fraudulent activity this year is completely unprecedented. For comparison: over the entire year 2022, fraudsters managed to extract 35.5 million lei from our citizens, whereas in just one and a half weeks this year – from May 20 to June 1 – the figure already exceeded 27.2 million (!). In other words, people are now literally losing millions every single day to scammers. Given the strong public resonance, our citizens on the whole remain vigilant and, in most cases, no longer allow themselves to be deceived. However, still, about one in twenty phone calls made by criminals ends in financial theft. The most vulnerable group is the elderly. Fraudsters exploit their trust in state and banking institutions, posing as employees of commercial banks or even the National Bank, police officers, investigators, civil servants, and so on. In addition, they constantly display creativity, devising new schemes and methods to extract money from the population. The issue has now become so acute that the authorities have been forced to take at least some action. However, the response so far remains purely bureaucratic: Parliament has established a commission tasked with investigating telephone, financial, and digital fraud. It will “examine the scale of such fraudulent schemes in the country, assess the response speed of competent authorities, as well as the effectiveness of mechanisms for blocking and recovering suspicious financial transfers.” At the end of its work, the commission is expected to present a report with proposals for improving criminal legislation. Meanwhile, the opposition “Our Party” has already registered a bill aimed at combating such fraud. It proposes introducing a call-warning system that would label internet-based calls with an appropriate notification, as well as requiring identity verification documents to be presented when purchasing SIM cards – in order to limit the use of anonymous numbers in criminal schemes. The ideas are certainly sound, but they are unlikely to be sufficient to eradicate this harmful phenomenon. In reality, the problem does not lend itself to linear solutions – far too many financial interests, incentives, and networks are involved, including those of a cross-border nature. To begin with, it must be acknowledged that combating this type of fraud is extremely difficult for the police. It cannot be said that there are no successes at all – but most often, those who end up in law enforcement hands are the criminals who physically arrive to collect money from deceived victims. As in the case of drug trafficking, couriers in this “business” are expendable: for every one caught, two or three new ones quickly appear. The prospect of quick and easy earnings is simply too attractive for many, especially during a period of socio-economic crisis in the country, when finding a well-paid job is far from easy. There are cases where entire call centers are shut down. However, this is more of an exception than the rule. Moreover, according to the opposition, most such operations enjoy an unofficial immunity from law enforcement scrutiny and criminal prosecution because “payments are made where they need to be made”. In general, it is similar to drug trafficking, which is allegedly protected from above. I am not stating definitively that this is the case. However, many are increasingly asking a reasonable question: where do all these digital and telephone fraudsters obtain databases of “solvent” citizens with phone numbers? The pro-government press blames open platforms and various services from which such data can be collected, but given the scale of the fraud, this explanation appears rather unconvincing. Well, it is, of course, difficult to ignore the elephant in the room – namely Ukraine, which is most likely where the majority of those who “scam” our citizens for money are based. As is well known, in the neighboring country fraudulent call centers have long become a powerful segment of the shadow economy, employing tens of thousands of people. This line of activity gained particular popularity back in the 2010s, when, following the Crimea and Donbas events that led to a near-complete breakdown in relations between Moscow and Kyiv, Ukrainian phone scammers began to systematically target the “Russian market”. This was, of course, not driven by patriotic motives, but by simple impunity – since the organizers of such schemes faced no consequences for defrauding Russian citizens, given the absence of any meaningful cooperation between the law enforcement agencies of the two countries. This led to the rapid growth of such “call centers” in Ukraine, of which there are now literally thousands, with annual turnovers amounting to tens of millions of dollars. Naturally, at some point they inevitably had to expand their activities beyond the Russian sphere of influence, especially as Russia itself was not standing idle and was, in its own way, making it more difficult for its citizens to be defrauded. As a result, the targets of these fraudsters expanded to include Russian-speaking populations in other post-Soviet countries as well – Belarus, Kazakhstan, and, as we can see, Moldova. Although the vast majority of them are still focused primarily on Russia, this does little to ease the situation for us, as is evident. As in our country, in neighbouring states the fight against telephone fraud is formally ongoing, with arrests of couriers and occasionally even organizers, but this has little impact on the overall situation. There is simply too much “feeding” of such establishments by influential figures higher up the chain, and in place of one dismantled fraudulent center, as a rule, two new ones emerge. Of course, politically this is an extremely unpleasant and inconvenient issue for our authorities, as it undermines the entire ideology of solidarity. After all, it would appear that while we are actively expressing empathy for and providing assistance to Ukraine, its citizens are massively deceiving residents of Moldova, with their authorities largely turning a blind eye. Law enforcement agencies, for their part, claim that there is indeed cooperation between Moldovan and Ukrainian institutions on this issue that operational work is being carried out and arrests are being made. Perhaps that is true, but has it solved the problem in any meaningful way? Judging by the news reports, absolutely not. Well, all that remains for us is to wait and see what exactly this parliamentary commission will study and come up with over the coming month – that is the timeframe they have been given to produce recommendations of some sort. In the meantime, the competent authorities are kindly advising citizens to stay vigilant and not fall prey to fraudsters. In short, everything is as usual: rescuing the drowning is a matter for the drowning themselves. Or did anyone expect anything different from PAS?