Forbes Call Centre Manager Stole Tel Nos And Used Them To Plunder Readers’ Bank Accounts

A man working in a call centre for the American business magazine Forbes reportedly stole hundreds of thousands from business people and celebrity readers of the magazine that he then spent on gambling and belly dancers.

Turkish man Hakan Karlidag, 45, allegedly stole the telephone numbers while running a call centre for the magazine in Germany, and then took them back to his home in Turkey where he set up a massive call centre organisation with more than a hundred people involved, and operations across 21 provinces.

Police say that Karlidag who is fluent in German, English, French and Arabic, was the mastermind who had run the operation from a villa he rented in Balikesir Akcay.

The money defrauded from Forbes readers, he had splashed out on a luxury lifestyle that included renting an entire casino for him and his family and friends, and arranging for them to be entertained by exotic belly dancers.

They then shared some of the images on social media.

After police were alerted to the scam, they discovered much of the money from victims that included not only celebrities and business people but also stockbrokers and economists who he conned into handing over cash.

Much of the money had been transferred into bank accounts owned by his family, including his wife Nurten Karlidag, his mother Nursel Karlidag, his mother-in-law Yasemin Ozeken, his father-in-law Ayhan Ozeken, his brother-in-law Batuhan Kinaci, his wife Aleyna Kinaci and his uncle Umit Yasar Cantore.

So far some 400 victims have been identified from countries including Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic, Canada, Peru, Qatar and Iraq, with a total loss of at least EUR 1 million (GBP 880,000).

Little has been revealed about how the scam worked, but he is believed to have placed adverts on the magazine’s websites warning people against fraudsters, and advising them to “call us if you are worried you might have been a victim”.

He then used alternate identities ranging from being a manager at the German central bank through to an inspector at the Ministry of Finance or even a police official lawyer.

It appears that he would advise them that they risk having their accounts frozen after being caught in a scam, but they could escape the problem by transferring the cash to another secure account which was of course controlled by himself.

Police confirmed they raided 21 locations with 116 people taken into custody and 31 of these arrested.