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Photo: Julian Stratenschulte/ dpa
From a Turkish call center, they are said to have stolen around 900,000 euros in five German federal states with the scam "fake police officers": The Turkish judiciary, with the help of investigators from Heilbronn, convicted a gang of 67 telephone fraudsters.
The group is said to be responsible for 16 completed and attempted acts in Baden-Württemberg, Rhineland-Palatinate, North Rhine-Westphalia, Hesse and Lower Saxony, according to the police and public prosecutor in Heilbronn.
Based on the investigations, the district court in Izmir, Turkey, sentenced the 67 accused to a total of 1,128 years, 6 months and 28 days in prison at the end of September.
It also imposed fines of the equivalent of 25 million euros.
The police and public prosecutor's office in Heilbronn had already set up an investigation team in 2018.
During searches in Turkey, the local police arrested the main perpetrator of the fraud and found money, gold, vehicles and real estate worth around 105 million euros.
This is intended to compensate the mostly older German victims of the fraudsters.
A spokesman said anyone who was the victim of telephone fraud could contact the police.
The investigators then checked whether the perpetrators in these cases were from Turkey.
kha/dpa