2024-02-18 06:44:35
Another arrest was made on Wednesday afternoon by police officers of the Ioannina Security Directorate for phone fraud cases, after the arrest of a 69-year-old Bulgarian woman two weeks ago for similar cases.
In the present case, a 26-year-old Ukrainian was arrested, who is accused of participation in a criminal organization and fraud by complicity, committed and attempted.
In more detail, since Wednesday morning there have been a number of complaints, mostly from elderly people, that they had received calls on their landline from strangers, who pretended to be – as the case may be – the police or the doctor, asking them for large sums of money, under the well-known pretext that their close relative had either caused a car accident in order to avoid criminal consequences, or had been the victim of a car accident and needed money to undergo surgery.
In addition, according to the content of the complaints, at least two women pretended to be the relative in question, begging for help in order to make their story even more convincing.
Following the above, special police teams were set up to gather information and identify people who would receive the money from people who might have been convinced. As a result of the police actions, a taxi was located on Egnatia Road (traffic flow towards Thessaloniki), in which the 26-year-old Ukrainian was riding as a passenger. During the check that followed, a bag was found in his possession, containing a sum of 1030 euros and gold.
As it was determined, the foreigner, having the role of “collector” in the organization, had received the above from an adult in Ioannina, following his guidance from his accomplices, who had convinced the adult to hand them over with the aforementioned trick.
The amount of money and gold, with a total value of approximately 10,000 euros, were returned to the owner, while, as it turned out, the members of the organization had tried in the same way to extort money on two occasions, asking – as the case may be – sums of money of 65,000 and 150,000 euros, respectively.
The arrested person was taken to the Criminal Prosecutor of Ioannina, while the investigation of the Ioannina Security Sub-Directorate to discover the identity of the remaining members of the organization continues.