The Tirana Prosecutor's Office officially reacted regarding the action against Call Centers that were deceiving EU citizens by promising to recover money lost in investments and investing in fictitious stock exchanges.
According to the prosecution, the 2-year investigation revealed the fraud scheme and imposed prison sentences for 7 people, "Prohibition of leaving the country" and "Obligation to report to the judicial police" for 2 citizens, while 5 people were handcuffed.
Following information received from the Austrian authorities, it emerged that Eduart Dalla, Xhoel Mekolli, Marsel Lami, Ledio Toçi, Aida Vokli, Ledio Cenaj, Tedi Agastra, Mateo Hoxha and Xhoni Hitaj were defrauding various citizens of European Union countries through call-center activities, causing them significant financial losses.
These people, in cooperation with each other, were divided into different groups according to languages (German, English, Italian) and aimed at certain international markets. Each group consisted of 6-8 agents and was supervised by the manager who monitored them. The work of the people who spoke Italian consisted of making phone calls to Italian citizens offering them the service of recovering money that they had lost in previous investments in 'online trading' and, if the people were interested, they then instructed them to open an account at "Coin Baze", with an initial deposit of 500 Euros. The task of the operators was only to convince the clients to make the initial payment of 500 Euros and their monthly salary was around 800 Euros, part of which they received in hand and the rest in the bank. Each of the employees had a username and operated under pseudonyms.
These call centers operated with a high level of organization, clear division of tasks and hierarchical control, resembling legitimate business structures. This professional organization enabled large-scale, cross-border fraud and is suspected of committing fraud involving large amounts of money in Vienna and other cities in Austria from June 15, 2023 to July 30, 2024.
The above persons are suspected of having induced the injured citizens, through the presentation of false circumstances, to believe that the transferred amounts would actually be invested. As a result of these unlawful actions, the perpetrators have unfairly benefited, for themselves or on behalf of third parties, since the injured, due to fraud, have transferred considerable amounts of money, which in total are estimated to exceed the amount of 50 million euros.
Victims usually enter these fraudulent platforms through a fake advertisement of a famous person. The prosecution identified that citizens TA and MH, during 2024, received significant amounts of cryptocurrency in Crypto addresses and then transferred them to other Crypto addresses. These two citizens are the ultimate beneficiaries of the cryptocurrencies of these Call Centers.
The joint investigation team created in September 2025, between the Prosecutor's Office at the Court of First Instance of General Jurisdiction of Tirana and the Prosecutor's Office of Vienna, managed to document the transactions carried out to the detriment of the injured Austrian citizens. The investigations resulted in the entities, "IOTA Network", "Victory Communication", "Espiron Studio", "Zeta Studio", "Upstream Creative" and "Koppa Network" being linked to each other by the telephone number left in the Central Bank, e-mail addresses and addresses of the exercise of activities and in most cases suspected of being fictitious and having operated as call centers. Investigations continue to identify other persons involved in these fraudulent schemes. During the intervention, 891,735 euros were seized; 443 computers; 238 mobile phones, etc.
Some of the suspects have been briefed on security measures, while those who were arrested in the act will appear in court.
Full list:
The following measures have been communicated to the suspects:
Eduart Dalla - prison sentence
Tedi Agastra - prison sentence
Mateo Hoxha - prison arrest
Joel Mekolli - prison arrest
Ledio Toçi - prison arrest
Aida Vokli - Ledio Toçi's wife - obligation to appear and ban on leaving the country
No arrests or measures have been taken:
John Hitaj - prison sentence
Marsel Lami - prison arrest
Ledio Cenaj - obligation to appear and ban on leaving the country
