An 81-year-old woman who was tricked by a phone scammer has got back €13,907.13 after Bulgarian and Romanian authorities worked together on the case and a lot of effort went into it.
On 8 December 2025, a stranger rang her landline and said he was a police officer. He told her she had to help catch a gang of phone scammers. She believed she was helping the police and handed all her savings to a stranger.
The scammers used several people as "mules", who were also fooled. They thought they were carrying documents and did not know they were moving money from a crime.
The joint team includes the fraud unit at the Chief Directorate for Combating Organised Crime (GDNP), the regional police directorates (ODMVR) in Dobrich and Veliko Tarnovo, the district prosecutor's office in Dobrich and the prosecutor's office at the court in Bucharest.
In 2024 and 2025, work by the institutions in both countries helped stop more than 50 other phone scams. Six men suspected of similar crimes have been detained.
This is not the first time the team has given money back to a victim. So far, more than €70,000 and €74,137 (145,000 leva) have been returned to the gang's victims.