Shock calls and fake police officers cause enormous damage: telephone fraudsters steal 11 million francs!

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It’s happening to more and more elderly people in Switzerland: an unknown caller contacts them and tells them that their son or daughter has caused a serious accident and is now in police custody. A deposit must now be made urgently – amounting to tens of thousands of francs. This sounds so dramatic and convincing that many seniors are surprised and accept the demands for money out of concern for their loved ones.

At least 150 people in Switzerland have been scammed this way this year. And this is just the number of registered victims of shock calls claiming that family members were in danger. The number of unreported cases is likely to be much higher.

Total damage 2 million higher than last year

According to official figures, fraudsters have already defrauded almost eight million francs with this scam from January to August. In 2021, the total amount of money scammed through shock calls still stood at one million. By 2022 there were already six.

According to law enforcement authorities, Polish family clans are the masterminds behind the shock call scam. Turkish citizens are largely behind the second telephone fraud to spread across Switzerland: the ‘fake policeman’. This year the perpetrators were successful here 170 times. They stole 3.5 million francs.

Fake police officers are up to mischief

“We have been able to register around 40 arrests across Switzerland in connection with these ‘fake police officers’,” said Rolf Rüdisser, Bern’s public prosecutor for economic crimes. “Sixteen arrests have been made throughout Switzerland because of the shock calls,” he explains.

With the ‘fake police officers’, callers warn about fraudsters and use the victims as decoys for alleged police investigations. Here, so-called bank guards can report: “Did you buy a television yesterday for 6,000 francs?” is a typical opening question. The victim would then deny this. “You see, something is wrong,” is said on the other end of the line. “Well, we can sort this out. We have been noticing for some time that strange debits are taking place within banks. The police are already there. But you could help us by deducting 20,000 from your account…” This scam can work like this or something similar.

Via telephone book to the victims

Victims are often older women. “The fraudsters specifically look for seniors in the electronic telephone book. They do this on the basis of first names,” says the public prosecutor. They would focus on names like Roswitha, Rosmarie, Hedy or Ruth, i.e. first names where there is a good chance that they do not concern a young woman. One can only speculate about the reasons why more women are contacted than men.

However, the police usually only manage to arrest the so-called ‘collectors’, i.e. the people who collect the money from fraud victims. The Turkish gangs often find their ‘pick-ups’ through advertisements in Switzerland, while the Polish gangs usually find them as clan members.

Authorities work together across borders

The Swiss authorities are finding it difficult to reach the so-called ‘boarers’, the callers based in Poland or Turkey. The ‘logistics’ coordinate the fraud schemes between the ‘boarers’ and the ‘collectors’, and the authorities cannot easily catch them either. To reach the people behind it, you have to do it quickly. The classic route via a legal assistance request takes too long.

Now, however, the tide could be turning: the public prosecutor’s offices of Bern and Zurich and their cantonal police have joined forces with security authorities from Germany, the Czech Republic and Poland to form a joint investigation group. Austria could also join.

A prevention campaign will follow soon

Should it be a shock call, the Swiss security authorities must be able to communicate quickly with their Polish colleagues. Using the telephone details of the “collector” in Switzerland, the person collecting the goods can, at best, be found in Poland.

But it is best if people do not get scammed by phone scammers. To this end, Swiss crime prevention and the cantonal and municipal police will launch a national prevention campaign at the beginning of October. Because: “These acts must stop!”, says prosecutor Rolf Rüdisser.

Source:Blick