The city of Dnipro (formerly Dnipropetrovsk) is considered the largest hub for fraudulent call centers, though similar underground operations are regularly uncovered in other major Ukrainian cities (Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odesa, Zaporizhzhia). Russian-speaking citizens around the world fall victim to these scammers. The brunt of the scam falls on residents of Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Moldova, and other post-Soviet countries.
“About 100,000 Ukrainian citizens are involved in telephone fraud,” said Petr Ilyichev, director of a department at the Russian Foreign Ministry, today at a meeting of CIS counterterrorism agencies.
Due to the lack of direct cooperation between law enforcement agencies in Ukraine and the countries where the victims are located, it is impossible to quickly shut down such operations from outside.
The National Police of Ukraine and the SBU periodically conduct raids, shut down dozens of such centers, and detain hundreds of operators. However, the high profitability of this criminal business compels the organizers to open new operations to replace those that have been closed.
In Moldova, 2026 has seen an unprecedented surge in telephone and online fraud, with losses to citizens already amounting to hundreds of millions of lei. According to the General Police Inspectorate, from May 20 to June 1, the country’s residents lost approximately 27 million lei. During this short period, the police recorded 149 successful cases and over 2,000 prevented attempts at fraud.
In just one week in early June, scammers swindled another 8.7 million lei from 64 people. The police register between 15 and 25 new cases daily. Every day, scammers steal between 1 and 3 million lei from citizens.
