The victims of the fraud series can be found in several different countries. About 40 of them are from Finland.
Foreign fraudulent manufacturers used Matkahuolto’s name to their advantage. Illustration picture. Karoliina Vuorenmaki
The Finnish police, together with the investigative cooperation coordinated by Europol, has uncovered an international series of online frauds. The criminals had approached the victims on the social media marketplace by pretending to be buyers through fake profiles and tricked the interested parties into giving their card details to the scam website.
According to the press release published by the Internal Finland Police Department, the international cooperation in this case began at the initiative of the Ukrainian police. There are nine suspects and they are citizens of Ukraine. The interested parties, i.e. the victims, are from different countries: Finland, Denmark, Norway and Hungary. There are about forty Finnish victims. The profit from crime in crimes committed against Finns alone is more than 60,000 euros.
Criminals created fake profiles on social media, through which they offered themselves as buyers to victims who sold products on the Facebook Marketplace. After the contact, the criminals sent the victims a fishing link made with a bot in the name of Matkahuolto in order to redeem the delivery costs or payment for the product.
The victims mistakenly entered their bank card information on the page that opened behind the link. Criminals thus gained access to card information and transferred funds for their own purposes.
In December 2024, the national cyber unit of the Ukrainian police conducted several house searches of the suspects’ apartments and seized IT equipment and mobile phones, the investigation of which has revealed evidence of fraud manufacturing. In this way, the police also caught a fishing message in Finnish in the name of the transport company.
The Finnish police’s national network-assisted crimes investigation unit has mapped the crimes committed in this way in Finland and reported to the police, as well as the potential victims.
The preliminary investigation is ongoing and the information will probably be updated as the investigation progresses. The police will inform about the matter later as necessary.