An insolent but overly greedy attempt by scammers to con a 13-year-old youth out of all the money and jewelry in his family home by unknown callers, who claimed his mother had run over a child with her car and faced jail time, led to the arrest of at least one suspect over the weekend.
The shocking but all-too common scam whereby a caller tricks a victim, usually an elderly person, into turning over money and jewelry this time had a more auspicious ending and led to an arrest and search for more suspects.
The arrested individual was identified as a 67-year-old Bulgarian woman, who was nabbed in the central Omonia square district as she picked up what she thought was a backpack with money inside.
At least two scammers, one impersonating the youth’s mother and another a police officer, first convinced the 13-year-old to collect all the money from the family’s Zografou district apartment. He was instructed to put the money in a bag and toss it over the balcony. The youth collected around 2,500 euros, jewelry and watches in the first instance. The scam artists then called the youth again, the second time on his cellphone and again from an unknown number, demanding more loot. He again acquiesced.
The third time, however, proved not to be the “charm”, as the youth’s unsuspecting mother had arrived home and was informed by her bewildered son of the incident.
Police were immediately contacted and when the scammers called a third time and told the boy to find more cash, hail a taxi cab and head to Omonia square, a trap was set in motion to arrest the person picking up the bag delivered by the youth – who was now being shadowed by undercover officers.
