Introducing themselves as police officers, a Turkey-based crime ring has duped elderly people in Germany into handing over their money and valuables. German elders lost a total of 8.4 million Euros to the Turkish crime ring in 2022.
The German police have long been investigating a crime ring introducing themselves as police officers to swindle elderly people through phone calls. According to German officials, the number of elderly people in the north of Germany duped by the crime ring increased significantly in 2022 compared to previous years. It came out that the Turkey-based crime ring had made 12,800 calls in 2022.
Members of the crime ring, who had obtained all the identity and address information of their victims beforehand, introduced themselves as police officers and told elderly people on the phone: “If your money is in the bank, it is not safe, if you hand it over to us, it will be safe.” They made repeated calls trying to convince victims with the same scheme.
BASED IN IZMIR
After repeated phone calls, victims finally hand over the money they withdraw from the bank to a member of the crime ring. According to a special report by the German television channel NRW, the crime ring is based in Turkey and phone calls are made from Izmir.
According to reports, the amount of money obtained from victims could be more than 100 thousand Euros in a single fraud. The highest amount so far is 180 thousand Euros. Speaking to NRW, German police officials revealed that the crime ring defrauded the elderly in the State of Lower Saxony the most.
It is reported that the criminal group gathered a total of 4.5 million Euros from nearly 200 people in this state last year alone. The group swindled 2.1 million Euros from 55 people in Hamburg, 1.2 million Euros from 24 people in Schleswig-Holstein and 627 thousand Euros from 29 people in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.
