Bulgaria Interior Admits Failure to Deal with Phone Crimes

Bulgaria’s Interior Minister, Tsvetan Tsvetanov, explains police failure to solve phone crimes with legislative changes. Photo by BGNES

The Interior Ministry cannot be effective in investigating and solving phone crimes, Bulgaria’s Interior Minister, Tsvetan Tsvetanov, stated Friday.

Tsvetanov spoke at the Parliament, and explained the above said failure with legal changes from the beginning of 2009 where the police were stripped of their right of quick access to phone operators' invoices.

Tsvetanov pointed out phone fraud has been on the rise in the last years where the perpetrators target mostly elderly people and voiced hope that the amendments of the Electronic Messages Act will help in solving the issue with police access to phone logs.

Police advise citizens to be on the lookout and make sure they establish with certainty the identity of the caller.

The latest case in Bulgaria’s phone fraud boom involves an 87-year-old man in the southern city of Stara Zagora. The man received a call that his granddaughter had killed a child during a traffic accident. He was asked to deposit BGN 7 000 for her bail with the Sofia police. The man met with a young woman in Stara Zagora and gave her all the money he had – BGN 4 500 to take to Sofia. He later got in touch with his granddaughter and discovered he had been victim of a crime scheme.

In the meantime, the police in the northeastern city of Razgrad report a new type of phone crime where the perpetrators use children. A family in the city received a phone call Thursday afternoon with a child crying and telling them there was a fight at his school and a classmate had died. Then a man picked up the receiver and said he was a police officer and asked the family to provide money in the amount of BGN 5 000 for the prosecutor, who would help them with the release of their son. The terrified parents did not have that much money and went to the police precinct to look for their child where they discovered the whole story was fraudulent.

 

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