Police officers from the Cybercrime Division detained eight people associated with the premium SMS fraud, which affected almost 160,000 of Polish citizens.

The fraudsters registered hundreds of websites and announced several contests offering attractive prizes, such as cash vouchers for all kinds of merchandise (clothing vouchers, top-up vouchers, etc.). In order to participate in the contest, the victim had to send a premium SMS message. The next step was to fill in the form and transfer 50 PLN to the indicated bank account, using on-line payment.

Needles to say that the victim never received any wins.

To make the whole scam took more convincing, the fraudsters employed people who were tasked with posting positive posts and encouraging the victims to participate in the contests. Scammers popularized their services using social networking sites where they bought fanpages with a lot of “likes”. Then they simply removed the original text given on the websites and added fake news about the SMS contests.
Police has also confirmed that, since 2016 the fraudsters have utilized the smsapi service, sending massive amounts of SMS messages to countless recipients. The messages stated that the users/victims have activated the premium SMS service and, in order to disable it, they must send a SMS to the indicated number. In reality, sending such a message triggered the premium SMS service instead of turning it off.

The scale of the fraud was extensive, allowing the scammers to accumulate over 1.3 million zlotys!

As the investigation continues,  police does not rule out any further arrests.