Since people have been forced to stay home, the number of business done online has been increasing rapidly.
The degrees on the net don't always go well.
Customers are being ripped off.
If you ask the police about this, one thing can even be said: Corona is the era of internet fraudsters!
Dachau -
The Dachau Police Department has seen a huge increase in Internet fraud in recent months, with the criminals' imagination seeming to be limitless.
The cybercrime specialist at PI, Stefan Reichenbächer, has to deal with numerous meshes.
And he has to state: Again and again the citizens make it easy for the crooks.
And unfortunately it is also difficult for the investigators to prove the crimes.
The High Commissioner describes a current case: A pack is being handed over with an iPhone in it.
Instead, there are nuts in it.
The recipient opened the package.
The sender claimed to have set the cell phone.
"Show him that it wasn't like that."
"Everything is in", says Reichenbächer and names the most common scams at the moment:
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PI Dachau has done most of the work in these weeks with cases in which goods are simply paid for in advance but not delivered.
"There has been a very clear increase," said Reichenbächer.
He therefore advises buyers to "be very careful with advance transfers".
It is better to use payment services such as PayPal.
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The investigators are repeatedly dealing with fake advertisements for rental apartments on real estate portals.
Here serious advertisements are simply copied and the rental price is reduced.
"The four-room apartment in Munich is being offered for 800 euros," says Reichenbächer, "and when the housing shortage prevails, people strike quickly."
After transferring the deposit plus the first rental installment, he sends the keys - which of course never arrive.
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The rip-offs via so-called fake shops should actually be well known.
Actually.
But customers continue to order by the dozen from non-existent suppliers of all kinds of goods. Hence Reichenbacher's urgent appeal: "Googling the company, pay attention to the relevant entries, call consumer protection associations if you suspect it!" often into the void because the villains have registered their business in Germany, but their account is abroad.
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A particularly perfidious subspecies of fake shops are the “China shops”, as they are called in police circles.
Asian crooks operate here with German-sounding email addresses.
Payment can be made here almost exclusively by credit card.
Customers are almost always attracted with bargains.
“The 1200 Euro Miele washing machine is nowhere available for 400 Euro”, says Reichenbächer.
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The trickery of eBay classifieds continues to cause great damage.
In this context, cybercrime specialist Reichenbächer denounces that online banks make it easy for foreign fraudsters to open an account in Germany by messing around with video verification.
The High Commissioner also gives an example here: "If a Russian wants an account with us, it is enough if he holds his face and a forged ID in the camera." The most popular fraudulent object in these times: supposedly cheap, but real nonexistent playstations.
If the customer has transferred the money for the game console in advance, it will be transferred somewhere else from the specified account within a very short time.
The business is thus "cashed out", as the police call it.
Telephone trickery in connection with the pandemic is slowly but surely on the rise.
Two examples: Fraudsters offer their victims the corona vaccination for sale and promise an earlier vaccination appointment - for a corresponding payment.
Or a variant of the grandchildren's trick: a relative says he has Corona and needs money as soon as possible to pay for the treatment.
You have to know that the vaccination is free of charge.
It is currently only carried out in vaccination centers and by mobile teams for care in old people's and residential homes.
According to the Upper Bavaria North Police Headquarters, the corona trickery has hardly occurred in the Dachau district so far.
However, this is partly because the police do not pursue cases in which the alleged victim smells the roast and hangs it up immediately.
"We call this cold cases," says Reichenbächer.
