Two younger males have been arrested within the Netherlands on suspicion of working a phishing operation that harvested the bank card particulars of unsuspecting victims.
On June 23 2026, Dutch police detained a 23-year-old man from Zaandam and a 21-year-old from Amsterdam, and searched their respective houses, seizing units thought to have been used for fraudulent transactions, alongside luxurious items and a automobile.
In accordance with a police press launch, victims had been duped into coming into their cost card particulars on bogus phishing web sites.
Though the police assertion didn’t describe the character of the precise phishing websites alleged to have been arrange by the boys, or the lures used to idiot the unwary, extra typically the everyday sort of credit-card phishing scams at present encountered within the Netherlands contain faux PostNL/DHL “redelivery charge” texts, or spoofed financial institution webpages, or more and more malicious QR codes.
Investigators consider the arrested males, who haven’t been named, didn’t simply misuse the stolen cost card particulars themselves, but additionally handed them on to different fraudsters. Sadly it is all too frequent for stolen knowledge to be offered, shared, and reused – typically many occasions over.
Simply sooner or later after police made the arrests public, the Dutch central financial institution (DNB) launched figures displaying that cost fraud within the Netherlands rose by round 30% in 2025, to roughly 658,000 instances – with whole losses climbing 22% to €198 million.
Card cost fraud was discovered to be the only commonest class, with over half one million fraudulent transactions (up greater than 1 / 4 on the 12 months earlier than).
And the everyday approach that criminals acquire these card particulars in accordance with the central financial institution? Phishing.
In accordance with fraud-prevention agency BioCatch, which analysed knowledge from the European Banking Authority, the Netherlands now ranks highest of all international locations within the European Financial Space for digital cost fraud.
The cybercrime unit of the Dutch police’s Noord-Holland division says they aren’t ruling out additional arrests, and their investigation continues.
On 19 Could, the exact same police unit arrested two 23-year-old males from Bergschenhoek on suspicion of promoting “phishing panels” – ready-made kits of pretend web sites, mimicking real financial institution webpages – to different criminals as a type of phishing-as-a-service. Police claimed that the pair offered their panels through social media to fraudsters in a number of international locations, focusing on banks throughout Europe.
None of this, after all, undoes the hurt already executed to the victims. Worryingly few victims ever come ahead to the authorities. In 2024, simply 1% of Dutch fraud victims recovered their cash, and whereas round half reported the crime to their financial institution, solely a fifth went to the police.
In different phrases, these arrests are simply the tip of a really massive iceberg.
