Correction (14 July 2026). This article was published describing Ungheni as “an ageing district”. National Bureau of Statistics data disprove that: people over 60 make up 24.5% of the district’s population — below the national average of 25.8%; of the country’s 33 territorial units, Ungheni ranks 32nd by the share of older residents. The absolute figure (18,259 people over 60) remains real and important, but the comparative label was wrong. We have corrected the headline and the text.
After the Government decided that SIM cards can be activated only with an ID document, the second front in the fight against phone scams — the one moved into the operators’ yard — took another step. On 2 July, in the plenary sitting, Parliament passed in first reading a bill that would require telephone providers to detect and block calls with a spoofed number and to display on screen, where appropriate, the “internet call” label, according to Parliament’s statement. The initiative belongs to a group of opposition MPs, from the “Partidul Nostru” (Our Party) faction, and until now had only been examined in committee.
What it provides, specifically
The core of the bill is an obligation for operators that ensure the origination, transit or termination of calls: to implement “technical and organisational measures to detect, verify, mark, filter, limit and block suspicious calls”. Around it, a few concrete provisions:
- calls coming from outside the country but displaying a Moldovan number would be subject to additional checks or blocked, under requirements set by the National Agency for the Regulation of Communications (ANRCETI);
- internet calls disguised as ordinary calls would display the “internet call” label on screen, so people can more easily recognise fraud attempts;
- fines of up to 75,000 lei for operators that do not block such calls and for using equipment that spoofs the number (the so-called “SIM boxes” or GSM gateways) — in that case with a possible ban on carrying out the activity for between 3 months and one year; selling or activating cards without identification — up to 50,000 lei for individuals and 75,000 lei for companies.
Why: 2.4 million fraudulent calls in a year
The figure that explains the rush belongs to the regulator. According to an ANRCETI guide that entered into force at the beginning of this year, based on data reported by operators, in 2024 Moldovans received about 2.4 million fraudulent calls — nearly 150% more than in 2023. This is the number of calls, not the money lost; but it shows the scale of the phenomenon. And the damage is on a par: in the first five months of 2026 alone, the police recorded around 1,767 complaints and losses of nearly 157 million lei, most schemes relying on impersonating a bank employee or on false “investments”.
Important to say: the regulator is not starting from scratch. ANRCETI already has a set of anti-spoofing recommendations, aligned with European standards and with the international STIR/SHAKEN mechanism — the one that verifies whether the number shown on screen is real or spoofed. What the bill would bring is the move from recommendation to obligation, with fines. The solution is not exotic: number verification is already mandatory in the US and Canada, has been adopted by France, and the UK and Belgium block calls from abroad that display national numbers. Europol estimates that number spoofing causes, globally, losses of about 850 million euros a year.
It merges with the “SIM card with an ID”
For a few days, the question was how this bill would square with the other legislative wave — “SIM card only with your ID”, coming from the Government through the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Parliament’s statement now gives the answer: for the second reading, the two will be merged into a single text. The opposition’s bill in fact itself carries the card part too — the obligation to activate prepaid SIM cards only on the basis of an ID document, with the suspension of numbers left unidentified within the deadline set by ANRCETI. In practice, the two fronts — the anonymity of the card and the blocking of spoofed calls — end up in the same law.
In the same sitting, a national anti-fraud plan
Also on 2 July, Parliament heard the report of the inquiry commission on phone, financial and digital scams — chaired by MP Lilian Carp — and approved, by a decision, the recommendation to create a National Anti-Fraud Focal Point. It would be a single coordination centre, operating around the clock and in real time, bringing together the Ministry of Internal Affairs, SIS, the Prosecutor General’s Office and PCCOCS, the police, the Anti-Money-Laundering Service, the Cyber Security Agency, the National Bank, the banks, telephone and internet operators and ANRCETI. Its role — real-time information exchange, the immediate blocking of fraudulent numbers and platforms, mandatory anti-spoofing systems and a single rapid population-alert mechanism.
The figures behind the decision are also heavier than those from a few days ago. The commission found that over 95% of frauds are committed through “social engineering” — directly deceiving the person — from spoofing the number and impersonating banks or authorities to “investments” using deepfake technology and the classic “relative in an accident” scheme. In the first five months of 2026, the number of cases rose by 21.7% compared with last year, and the total damage declared by victims reached, in 2025, a record of about 272 million lei. The Government will have to present Parliament, within 90 days, a report on what it has done to implement the recommendations.
What it does not solve and how long it will take
Honestly, this measure too is not a wall, but still a brick. It does not touch fraud through messages or through apps (WhatsApp, Telegram), nor purely international calls, over the internet, from outside the classic networks. There also remains the risk of mistakenly blocking legitimate calls. Then there is the cost: the initiators say the necessary software would cost between 300,000 and 800,000 dollars per operator — an expense someone will bear, and the operators have not yet made their position public. And, not least, the timetable: the bill has only passed first reading, the second reading follows — with the merged text — and only then does it enter into force; separately, the anti-fraud plan is for now a recommendation, with a 90-day deadline for the Government.
The facts about the first-reading vote and the merger come from Parliament’s statements of 2 July 2026. The figure of 2.4 million fraudulent calls belongs to the National Agency for the Regulation of Communications (ANRCETI), based on data reported by operators; the record damage of about 272 million lei in 2025, the 21.7% increase and the structure of the frauds are from the parliamentary inquiry commission’s report presented on 2 July. The data on complaints and damage in the first five months of 2026 are attributed to the General Police Inspectorate. The international context relies on independent sources. The cost of the technical solution is an estimate by the initiators, not an official quote. The operators’ position on the bill was not public at the time of publication. There is no data on the number of fraudulent calls strictly at the level of Ungheni district.