Romanian authorities have dismantled a fraud network of 50 individuals who hacked into VoIP servers belonging to companies from around the world and made fraudulent phone calls to premium rate numbers.

According to prosecutors from the Romanian Directorate for Investigating Organized Crime and Terrorism (DIICOT), the criminal operation was started in October 2009 by two men named Catalin Zlate and Cristian Ciuvat.

Zlate was allegedly the brain behind the whole scheme. Investigators claim that he used IP scanning software to locate Voice-over-IP (VoIP) servers on the Internet and attempted to crack their username and password through various methods.

Another program dubbed "Zoiper" was used to route calls to premium rate numbers through the hacked VoIP accounts in exchange for a commission.

For each minute at an 1 euro/min. rate, Zlate earned 0.10 euros. Between October 2009 and February 2010 he allegedly placed 23,500 fraudulent calls totalling 315.000 minutes.

In order to earn bigger commissions, Zlate created a company called Shadow Communication Ltd., through which he signed contracts directly with premium rate number operators.

Evidence shows that between February and December this year, Shadow Communication Ltd. made 1,541,187 calls, totalling a whooping 11,094,167 minutes. Meanwhile, Zlate co-opted other members into his organization, raising the total number of accomplices to over 50.

Companies from UK, US, Romania and South Africa, who operated the hacked VoIP servers, suffered over 11 million euros in losses, of which the gang earned at least 1 million.

Assisted by police officers, DIICOT prosecutors executed search warrants at locations in seven Romanian counties. Numerous computers were seized for analysis and a number of 42 individuals were taken in for questioning.

Preliminary charges include establishing an organized criminal group, money laundering, using software designed to obtain unauthorized access to a computer syste, obtaining unauthorized access to a computer system and sending unauthorized instructions to a computer system with the purpose of financial gain.

Footage taken on Tuesday morning during some of the raids: