She’s so ashamed that she keeps her webcam turned off during the interview via Teams. Her academic advisor is also present in the room, for mental support. Mia is from a non-EU country, and studying at TU/e is a dream come true for her.

That dream is what keeps her going now. “I would prefer to stay in bed all day, but I want to graduate with good grades. I want my story – what I tell others about myself – to be about my achievements, not about what has been done to me now.”

Large quantity of drugs

It’s a Tuesday afternoon when Mia receives a phone call from a man who claims to be working for the police. He starts to speak in an urgent tone: her passport was found in an apartment in Amsterdam, next to a large quantity of drugs. It also turned out that her bank account has been used for money laundering. Mia is the prime suspect.

“I was shocked and started to panic. Now I know that the police in the Netherlands always uses an anonymous number – which wasn’t the case – and that they don’t call in these kinds of situations but talk to people in person. But I didn’t know that, I had no experience with the official bodies in this country.”

Citizen service number

The man manages to convince Mia to give him her citizen service number, and connects her to an accomplice who claims to be a district court judge. He puts even more pressure on her during a long conversation over the telephone.

He tells her that her bank account was misused by a bank employee to launder large sums of money, but that she is the one who will be held responsible. He then informs her that she will be caught up in lengthy judicial proceedings and that she can forget about her studies. If she does what he tells her to do, he can help her.

Clouded by panic, Mia decides to cooperate. She downloads the program AnyDesk, which allows the fraudster to gain access to her computer from a distance. She also authorizes her bank via telephone to increase her spending limit.

Cryptocurrency

Mia can see on her computer screen how the man transfers 13,000 euros to her account and subsequently transfers it to a bank account in Poland. “They probably stole that amount from someone in the same way. I sometimes fear that this person might try to find me, then what am I going to say?”

She then sees how the man on the telephone withdraws her tuition money for an entire year – 10,000 euros – from her account. At that moment she still thinks that this is done to help her, since a corrupt bank employee is misusing her account. But she later finds out that the money has been transferred to Coinbase, an American cryptocurrency platform.

When she realized that, Mia took all the right steps, her academic counsellor stresses: after talking to her brother, she called the police, the bank and her country’s embassy. The phone call to her parents was the hardest one she had to make. “They started to cry when I told them what had happened.”

Blocked

Mia fears that she has lost that sum of 10,000 euros, a huge amount of money for a student, for good. “The police sent me letter saying that they won’t investigate the case due to a staffing shortage. The bank blocked my account, with the remaining money still in it, weeks ago and says that it is currently investigating the matter. I can’t pay my rent anymore now.”

She has legal assistance, but her lawyer – who was appointed to her by the embassy – can’t perform miracles. TU/e’s academic advisor, student counselor and other staff members help wherever they can, but that won’t bring the money back either, unfortunately.

Shrewd

In between her appointments with official bodies, Mia tries to focus as best she can on her study activities. And she tries to warn others, so that something similar won’t happen to them. International students, unfamiliar with police culture in the Netherlands, are particularly vulnerable. Similar cases are also known at TU Delft. 

What signs should they look out for? “The police always use an anonymous phone number,” Mia reiterates. “And they will never ask you for your citizen service number or bank account, nor will they ask you to download something.”

The fraudsters acted awfully shrewdly, as is clear from a recent episode from Dutch television show Opgelicht. The first ten minutes are devoted to a case that is quite similar to what happened to Mia. [This television item is in Dutch – red.]

If something similar has happened to you, don’t hesitate to contact your academic advisor or TU/e’s international office (via ESA).