Three more criminal groups that used phone scams to prey on vulnerable people have been broken on the southern island of Crete and in northern Greece, including one that targeted the same person three times, police said Tuesday.
Three people have been arrested, and warrants have been issued against another four suspects, a police statement said.
On Crete, a 23-year-old man was detained at the port of Iraklio for alleged involvement in seven cases of phone fraud and another nine of attempted fraud between February 23 and Sunday.
Police said the suspect and four alleged accomplices who evaded arrest phoned random numbers on Crete pretending to be power company officials or accountants, and talked their victims into leaving cash and valuables outside their homes for gang members to pick up. They allegedly maintained that a wiring fault made it dangerous to keep such items at home – or that tax authorities needed to register the valuables.
The scammers netted a total €2,170 in cash and jewellery worth another €12,000, police said.
And in the northern towns of Xanthi and Komotini, police on Monday arrested two alleged phone scammers.
In the first case, an elderly Kavala woman initially failed to take the bait when a scammer called her pretending to be a doctor who wanted cash urgently to operate on her supposedly injured daughter. But she then fell for a follow-up call from a woman who impersonated a police officer and asked her to help set up a sting operation to catch the first scammer by leaving the cash outdoors – with some jewellery.
Two days later, when the woman received a third call from the same scammers, she called the police who arrested the man who came to pick up the loot.
The second suspect was arrested in Komotini after failing to trick a local woman into leaving cash and jewellery outdoors.