Euros

Scammers impersonate Europol officers, going for quantity over quality, exploiting a design flaw in telecoms infrastructure.

But investigations into the criminals have struggled to make progress, in part because it has been left to separate police forces in the 16 federal states to look into the matter individually, many of whom are time-poor and overstretched. Germany’s Telecommunications Modernisation Act, which came into effect last December but allows a one-year implementation period, obliges phone providers operating in Germany to anonymise calls from a foreign network that try to disguise themselves as German numbers. The Federal Network Agency has found that the calls, which have arrived in Germany via networks in India, Romania, Spain and other countries, are likely being routed across several borders to cover the fraudsters’ tracks. The next call came from a Dutch number that a quick Google search seemed to confirm belonged to Europol. “We are literally not in a legal position to do so.” The ploy exploits design flaws in telecommunication infrastructure that phone providers are struggling to fix, and unlike previous phone-scamming schemes, it doesn’t appear to select its targets based on age or location.