14 DAY TRIAL // On Thursday, European law enforcement agencies, coordinated by the Europol’s European Cybercrime Center (EC3), have arrested a total of 43 individuals who were trying to board flights with airline tickets purchased with stolen credit card information.
The action is part of an operation aimed at preventing crimes, disrupting organized criminal activities, and gathering intelligence on the activities of organized crime rings that operate in the European Union.
European and international airlines, Visa Europe, and the EC3 had been planning the operation for several months.
A total of 38 airports from Austria, Croatia, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Hungary, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, the Netherlands, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, the United Kingdom, and Switzerland were targeted.
Seven individuals have been arrested in the UK, four in Spain, one in Romania, three in Poland, five in the Netherlands, three in Austria, seven in Greece, two in Finland, and four in Ireland and Germany. Over 200 suspicious transactions were reported by the industry during the operation.
The detained individuals are suspected of being linked to other criminal activities, such as distributing credit card data on the web, hacking the databases of financial institutions, drug trafficking, illegal immigration, scams, and document counterfeiting.
“Visa Europe is proud to have worked with all the international partners on this day of action,” Visa Europe’s Head of Fraud, Peter Bayley, noted.
“It is because of great work like this across the law enforcement industry, and Visa’s €100 million annual investment in new technology, that fraudsters face increasingly sophisticated methods of fraud detection and control. These factors also ensure Visa remains the safest and most convenient way for our customers to make payments,” he added.
“This is another great example of the increased cooperation between industry, Member States’ cybercrime units and the European Cybercrime Centre,” Troels Oerting, the Head of EC3 stated.
“This close way of working together is key if we want to keep pace with the development amongst organised criminal networks taking advantage of the new criminal opportunities in cyberspace.”