Two businessmen in Plovdiv lost almost everything in 90 minutes

A few days after the Plovdiv police and prosecutor’s office announced the fraud related to the withdrawal of loans between friendly families of Stara Zagora and Hisarya, “Blitz” came across a spectacular new fraud, through which a total of 115,000 BGN from two-man business accounts. Over the course of an hour and a half, 23 wire transfers of BGN 5,000 were made from their accounts in 3 minutes to private individuals they did not know. This amount is the limit that can be withdrawn from the cards in question.

Ilia Kavrkov from Karlovy Vary owns an air conditioning company. Until recently he did not know the building contractor from the nearby village of Rozino, Ali Mollahalil. What binds them and, shortly after, they met, is that they both had a total of BGN 115,000 withdrawn from their accounts, have corporate accounts with Raiffeisen Bank and use the services of the same accountant.

On the evening of September 8, the saga begins. Iliya Kavrakov examines his online banking and sees that BGN 40,000 are missing from his account and 8 transfers of BGN 5,000 each were made to people he didn’t know at all. He called the accountant more than 15 times, it was late at night, she didn’t answer and he went to his house.

The woman took it all calmly and said that besides him there is another customer who has larger sums in her business account, but she refused to call him because it was late.

He said during the day he didn’t have a phone for about 2 hours and was wondering what was going on. When she went to A1’s office in Karlovo, her employees showed her a contract for a duplicate of her SIM card, probably taken with a fake accountant’s ID card.

Our research showed that the duplicate SIM card license plate was taken from the company’s office in Sofia. For this reason the princess’s carat was immediately suspended.

After explaining that there was no request from him for a duplicate, the employees suspended the new card and reinstated his validity.

At that moment, a text message came that there had been a 5,000 BGN transfer from one of his customers’ card, but he decided it was some kind of mistake, Ilia says. The 23 withdrawals of BGN 5,000 each were made from Sofia and Plovdiv, most of them in the city below the hills.

After the accountant refused to go to her office and open the computer to find out what was happening that evening while Iliya Kavrykov was with her, she called construction contractor Ali Mollahalil the next day. Ali was in Karlovo when she called him and told him there were problems with online banking.

“I immediately went to the bank, she and the employees were waiting for me there. They opened my account and said that of the 94 thousand BGN I had inside, 75 thousand were missing. I called GDOBP Sofia, because it is a question of a large amount of money ordered. online from there they told me to go there, take the accountant with me, but she refused to come, gave me her work computer and I took it.

On the way, however, she called me and insisted that I return the computer to her because she was taking care of it. She said that she was quoting the words of her ex-husband, with whom despite the divorce they are on good terms and that he is a tax inspector at the National Revenue Agency in Plovdiv. She was told by the HSE that her computer had two viruses: the Trojans received a month ago.

They were sent on behalf of the NRA or a similar authority and hacked his computer. We have doubts that this accountant is involved, but there is an investigation, it will prove it.

But nothing has happened for a month, this money is not returned to us. For me that’s a lot of money, I burned 50,000 BGN, they gave me back 25,000 of my money, which was stuck on my credit cards and were unable to withdraw it. Even though my money was stolen, I paid over BGN 8,000 in VAT for it.

I filed a complaint with the bank to get the amount refunded, they replied that everything is regular for them and the accountant arranged the money in a channel order, as requested by them, “says Ali Mollahalil.

His lawyer Gancho Ganchev stated the following: “A similar money laundering scheme took place in Pazardzhik a month and a half ago. Here it strikes that both Iliya and Ali were scammed according to the same scheme, they are the same bank branch. in Karlovo, it is about the fact that they both have the same accountant.

You have both been delegated the right to dispose of the money, which leads us to think that it is possible that in some way you sympathize with the person in question.

We have taken all necessary measures, a complaint has been filed with the GDOBP, a preliminary proceeding is currently underway, complaints have been sent to the prosecutor’s office, the Karlovo police and the investigation continues.

What leaves a bitter aftertaste is the bank’s response. And it is he who, according to them, no crime was committed, since according to them the funds in question would have been ordered by the accountant.

However, he denies having ordered these payments and claims that they were made by a third party. For us there remains the doubt that it is an organized criminal group, given that 23 transfers of 5 thousand BGN are made every 3 minutes. There is no bank in Bulgaria that does not have a department that controls the transactions in question. In this case, these transactions could not have been suspended in 3 minutes. ”

Where the truth lies, who and through what scheme drained the vast amount of money is still a mystery. It is expected that there will soon be one or more defendants for the fraud.