Romanian police raid pyramid scheme smuggling migrants through trucks to Western Europe
Six adults in Caraș-Severin are under investigation for operating a pyramid-type network that concealed migrants in trucks bound for Hungary, Austria and Germany.
Police from the Caraș-Severin Organized Crime Service, together with DIICOT prosecutors, carried out six residential searches across the county to dismantle a pyramid-shaped criminal group. The IGPR described the operation as targeting a network that recruited, directed, sheltered and transported migrants in concealed compartments of trucks to facilitate illegal border crossings into Hungary, Austria and Germany. Evidence shows the group has been active since 2023, arranging multiple coordinated trips that hidden migrants from Egypt, Pakistan, Bangladesh, India and Ghana.
In August 2023, authorities discovered sixty people from those nations being smuggled. The six suspects, aged between 25 and 50, are now being interrogated at the DIICOT territorial office, with police from Timișoara, Arad, Caransebeș, border officers from Nădlac, special forces and local gendarmes participating in the raid.
Why it matters
It reveals a transnational smuggling ring that endangers migrants and challenges border security in Europe.
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