Phone and online fraud losses keep rising
In the first five months of 2026, more than 1,500 cases of telephone and online fraud were registered in Moldova. The damage caused over the past two years is already measured in hundreds of millions of lei. The total losses have risen sharply.
In 2023, victims reported losses of 40 million lei. In 2024, that figure increased to 130 million lei. By 2025, it had exceeded 272 million lei. Against this background, rumours have spread that some law-enforcement officers may be protecting fraud networks.
The head of the General Police Inspectorate, Viorel Cernăuțeanu, rejected the claims. He said the fraudsters themselves are not located inside Moldova and denied that police are covering for them.
“I am very sorry that you are taking information from some Telegram channels that have nothing to do with documentary checks and the provision of facts,” the head of the IGP said.
In effect, he advised journalists to ignore information circulating on messaging platforms.
Police say fraud calls come from abroad
At the same time, Cernăuțeanu confirmed that the voices heard in fraud calls are not coming from inside the country.
“The voices of the fraudsters come from outside the Republic of Moldova. If they were somewhere here, what would be the point of acting so actively in the process of combating these phenomena?” he said.
The enigma is obvious. While police say the calls come from abroad, the authorities are preparing to tighten control inside the country.
Cernăuțeanu announced that next week the government will examine a bill allowing the sale of PrePay SIM cards only upon presentation of an identity document.
According to the police chief, the lack of subscriber identification is currently the main obstacle to tracing criminal links inside Moldova.
Kostiuc: hearings look like a show for the press
Criticism of the authorities’ actions or inaction came from Vasile Costiuc, an MP from the Democracy at Home party. He compared the parliamentary hearings to a “fair for the press”.
“In a normal situation, a parliamentary commission has the tools to bring a criminal case about 90% of the way. But now we are organising something like a fair so the press can see: look, we are working,” Costiuc said.
His point was clear: public hearings may create the appearance of activity, but they do not lead to the real detention of major organisers.
Elderly women among main victims
The statistics show the scale of the problem. From 2023 to 2024, “investment schemes” alone, including cryptocurrency, forex and trading scams, caused losses of more than 115 million lei.
The “relative in an accident” scheme caused another 50 million lei in damage. Cernăuțeanu admitted that 85% of the victims are women. The main risk group is citizens over the age of 66. For many of them, the stolen money represents a lifetime of savings.
Yet instead of clear answers about who organises these schemes and why the losses keep growing, the public hears another familiar explanation: the criminals are abroad, the police are working, and stricter controls are needed at home. The numbers, however, suggest that Moldovans are less protected each year.
