Fraud call center work: 18 months in prison
court
At the Salzburg regional court, a 33-year-old was sentenced to 18 months in prison because he worked as a telephone operator in a call center and wrote for a cryptocurrency fraud worth millions.
The 33-year-old was charged with serious commercial fraud. The verdict is not yet legally binding. The Kosovar is said to have been part of an international gang that caused millions in damage with fictitious cryptocurrency trading. The 33-year-old is said to have called the victims of the fraud as a call center operator.
Called victims and encouraged deposits
At the trial on Tuesday, the 33-year-old confessed to the allegations made by the economic and corruption prosecutor. As a broker, he is said to have called the victims between April 2017 and February 2018 and encouraged them to make deposits on the trading platform. If the customers no longer wanted to pay, the courses were said to have been manipulated by special software in such a way that the investors’ money was gone.
The previously blameless Kosovar accepted the work in the call center for financial reasons in order to repay debts. Because of his good knowledge of German, he was assigned to the so-called “German Desk”, from where victims of fraud in Germany, Switzerland and Austria were called, said his defense attorney. His client was just a small number in the online fraud system. He had nothing to do with the criminal ideas, the manipulated software or the organization.