Crime by clans: At least 120 million euros captured

Fake police officers have stolen at least 120 million euros in Germany since 2018. Members of an Arab-Turkish clan are also organizing the fraud, as research by report Munich and rbb24 show.

The trial currently under way in the large criminal court of the district court in Izmir, Turkey, against 81 suspected fraudsters from Germany and Turkey could be an exemplary success given the difficult judicial and police cooperation between the two countries. The defendants are charged with “establishing an organization to commit crimes” and with fraud and money laundering of criminal assets. It is about organized telephone fraud based on the scam of the so-called fake police officers, with which mostly older people in Germany were robbed of their assets from call centers in Izmir.

Fraudsters pretend to be police officers on the phone and report, for example, on burglaries in the neighborhood. This is how they get people to hand over their assets to them, supposedly to keep them safe. They used “Call ID Spoofing”. With this procedure, a fake number, in this case a German number, appears on the display of the person being called.

Members of a clan belong to masterminds

A poll by report Munich and rbb24 research among the 16 state criminal investigation offices has shown that criminal gangs stole money, jewelery and gold worth at least 120 million euros nationwide with the scam between 2018 and 2020. According to this, more than 154,000 cases were registered in the period, of which the perpetrators were successful in a good 10,500 cases. Experts assume, however, that the damage and the number of victims are much higher: many of those affected by this scam would not report the fraud out of shame. Furthermore, this scam has only been reported to all state criminal investigation offices since 2018, although the first cases were already known in Germany in 2015.

The main perpetrators of the Izmir gang are three men from the vicinity of the Turkish-Arabic Miri clan from North Rhine-Westphalia and Bremen, who, together with other members of their extended family and other accomplices, are said to have been systematically ripping off their victims in Germany since 2016 at the latest. The hundreds of pages of indictment that report Munich and rbb24 research is available, shows 24 cases of fraud in which the path of the loot from the victims in Germany to Izmir could be traced – more than five million euros. It is the first time that such large-scale proceedings are being held against call center fraudsters in Turkey who sought their victims in Germany.

Victims could be compensated

In addition to the criminal police in Munich, where the threads ran together, other state criminal investigation offices were involved in the investigation. For them, the blow against the Izmir clan is only part of an extensive crime complex with an even larger network of criminals and accomplices operating from Izmir and other cities in Turkey.

The head of the gang accused in Izmir is said to be a multiple offender from the Miri clan, who fled from the detention cell of the Bremen district court ten years ago before a trial for burglary and then fled to Turkey. The Turkish public prosecutor’s office proves that he or other family members have several properties, including a hotel in the seaside resort of Çeşme. She has confiscated assets of the gang worth a total of 105 million euros. According to the Turkish judges’ union, after the gang members have been sentenced by the court in Izmir, their victims in Germany could be compensated.

Oliver Huth, state chairman of the Association of German Criminal Investigators (BDK) in North Rhine-Westphalia, sees the indictment as a breakthrough in the previously difficult police cooperation between Germany and Turkey. Because of the limited legal assistance, the country has so far been a safe exile for criminals from Germany.

Criminals abuse trust

In connection with the trial in Izmir, Hans-Peter Chloupek, head of the Phenomena working group at the Munich police, refers to the traumatization of the victims after they were often deprived of their livelihoods by the gangs in old age. During the investigation, it became clear how skillfully the suspects act. They unscrupulously exploit their victims’ trust in the police. Also in the case of a woman, which is particularly tragic. She sold her house for three million euros and bought diamonds and a watch with most of the money in order to hand them over to the fake police officers who were collecting them from Berlin. She thought she was helping a police officer who was allegedly being held hostage. The collector was caught and the diamonds were secured, but the house was gone.

The list of victims of the accused gang also shows at least two deaths that are said to be attributable to the fraud: In one case, the public prosecutor’s office assumes suicide as a result of the loss of assets. In a second case, the general practitioner of one of the victims, a man well over 80 years old, had already testified during court proceedings against the collectors in Germany that his patient had died for health reasons as a result of the fraud.

Money transfer via hawala banking

In all cases, the investigators followed the trail of the money to Izmir: including from Wuppertal, where those picking up the gang are said to have handed in money, gold and jewelry to a jeweller, a deposit point of a hawala network – an unofficial banking system based on trust , which is often used for money laundering. Without the money having physically changed country, the corresponding value is said to have been paid out to the gang at a payment point of the Hawala system in Izmir.

Detlev Boßbach, head of department at the LKA in North Rhine-Westphalia, assumes that the majority of the loot, in addition to classic smuggling, arrived in Turkey as passenger transport by plane or car, primarily via hawala banking. According to information from report Munich and rbb24 research the LKA in North Rhine-Westphalia and Bremen are currently checking whether individual members of the Miri clan have also laundered the loot from these frauds in Germany. The criminal police in Munich and the LKA in North Rhine-Westphalia are already running follow-up proceedings against organized gangs of bogus police officers from the Miri clan environment.

The ARD political magazine report Munich reports on the research in its program on February 8, 2022 at 9:45 p.m. The film “The Izmir Clan – Foray through Germany” will be available from 5 p.m. in the ARD media library.