Ukrainian Teen Cashed Out Money for Fake Bank Scammers — Gets 7 Years in Czech Prison

A Czech court has issued a not-yet-final verdict against a Ukrainian citizen who, as a teenager, took part in a large-scale phone fraud scheme involving fake bank employees. The young man, known as Blinda, was sentenced to seven years in prison, a ten-year expulsion order, and ordered to pay compensation running into several million crowns.

According to presiding judge Helena Přibylová, the court placed strong emphasis on general deterrence when handing down the sentence: it was important to demonstrate that such crimes would be punished as severely as possible, even when it comes to low-level operatives within the scheme. The fact that the defendant was merely a "pawn" who may not have known the organizers of the criminal group does not, in the court's view, absolve him of responsibility — he knowingly cooperated with a group that used elaborate methods to swindle large sums of money from its victims.

How the scheme worked

According to prosecutor Pavel Hajný, the case involves a large network of fraudsters who called victims across the Czech Republic. Under the pretext that their savings were at risk, the scammers either persuaded victims to transfer money to supposedly "safe" accounts, or tricked them into revealing their bank card details in order to clone the cards and withdraw cash.

"The defendant understood how the scheme worked and how the roles were divided. He knew that card clones were created on his phone using payment data obtained from victims. He then used these cloned cards to make contactless cash withdrawals from ATMs," the prosecutor stated. This is confirmed, among other things, by evidence police recovered from his mobile phone.

A harsher sentence than the prosecution requested

The court handed down a tougher sentence than the one requested by the prosecution. According to the presiding judge, one of the court's roles is to help prevent crime through exactly this kind of deterrent approach — imposing stricter sentences in cases where criminal activity is widespread in society and causes significant harm.

The court stressed that sophisticated cyber scams of this kind take a heavy toll on victims: many lose their life savings, and some are left needing antidepressants, unable to come to terms with what happened to them.

"The defendant did not cooperate with the investigation and did not help expose the other links in the chain. He showed no remorse whatsoever — on the contrary, he treated the whole affair with cynicism," Přibylová concluded.

Read also: Sending money from Czechia abroad: Wise, Revolut, or a bank

Around Prague, based on reporting by novinky.cz