“The end of a battle.” Sharjah Police announces the dismantling of 4 interconnected international criminal networks

(CNN) - Sharjah Police, in cooperation with the UAE Ministry of Interior and the Public Prosecution, announced the dismantling of 4 interconnected international criminal networks within a proactive operation it called “End of Battle.”

A Sharjah Police statement stated that the networks were involved in “electronic hacking crimes, money laundering through virtual assets, theft of digital wallets, fraud, extortion and data trafficking, in addition to violent attacks.”

According to the statement, the operation resulted in “the arrest of 33 defendants from 12 nationalities, including network leaders, the confiscation of more than 200 million dirhams ($54.4 million), the subjecting of more than 3,000 digital wallets to scrutiny, and the seizure of luxury cars, watches, jewelry, real estate, digital wallets, counterfeit currencies, and counterfeiting tools.”

The statement stated that the four networks relied on "an integrated criminal system... the first carried out electronic hacking and data theft operations, the second specialized in money laundering through virtual assets, while the third carried out social engineering operations and theft of digital wallets, while the fourth carried out violent physical attacks aimed at coercing victims to disclose the secret numbers of their digital wallets, or threatening them and harming their families, in a number of countries."

The Public Prosecution said that the investigations included studying more than 10,000 documents and reports, examining 103 electronic devices, issuing hundreds of decisions and judicial orders, in addition to local and international cooperation to track funds, freeze accounts, arrest the accused, and recover some of them from abroad.