"Hang up!"

Created: 05/07/2022, 15:02

Symbolic image © dpa

The wave of scammer and shock calls is unbroken.

Gauting's police chief Andreas Ruch informed around 70 senior citizens about the scam this week.

Gauting

- "The target group is you, your friends and acquaintances." Gauting's mayor Dr.

Brigitte Kössinger at the monthly senior citizens' café around 70 present citizens aged 60 plus.

On the initiative of the Senior Citizens' Advisory Board, Gauting's police chief Andreas Ruch spoke on Wednesday in the fully occupied Bar Rosso at the Bosco about fraud against senior citizens.

Ruch urgently warned of bogus police officers who wanted to make gullible grandparents believe on the phone that children or grandchildren were in need and needed money immediately.

Or before so-called shock calls, which are about the fact that children or grandchildren are said to be involved in often fatal accidents.

His advice: "Hang up!"

With a quarter of the population over the age of 65, citizens of the Würmtal community are almost “ideal” for con artists, Ruch warned.

The callers, "trained professionals", are sitting in call centers "somewhere in Turkey" and are thus evading German police access.

Their main weapon is the telephone.

They specifically chose people with old-fashioned-sounding first names such as Hildegard or Edeltraud.

The most recent case in Gauting "was a victim who lost 25,000 euros," he reported.

The elderly woman received a call from a young man she thought was her grandson.

He explained to her that his mother had killed a cyclist in Munich, a father of two from the Ukraine.

Now the mother and grandson are sitting with the Munich police on Ettstrasse.

Only by paying bail could the elderly woman prevent her daughter from going to Stadelheim prison.

The elderly woman was so perplexed that she immediately collected all her cash and gold jewelry, packed it in a box and handed it over to a "police messenger" as requested by the supposed "supreme inspector".

Only then did the pensioner call her real grandson – and realize that she had become a victim of scammers.

Last week, a woman from Gautingen, born in 1964, received a Whatsapp message that her "daughter" had a new cell phone number and had to make transfers "immediately", Ruch reported on another case.

She was so taken by surprise that she processed two real-time transfers of 3,500 euros to the number given in one minute.

Only after the third request for payment did it dawn on her that something was wrong.

The call to her daughter's previous cell phone number revealed that she was safely in Switzerland.

Ruch advised the seniors not to answer the phone or call back when they see 110 on the screen.

These are also fraudulent calls from abroad.

If citizens wish to call the local police, they are best advised to dial the service on (089) 8 93 13 30.

The Microsoft scam is also popular with scammers.

Alleged employees asked people to make payments, mostly in English.

Otherwise your PC screen will remain black.

The scammers accessed the victims' computers and cleared their accounts.

An elderly woman from the audience said that she had already received such a fraudulent call three times.

“Now I have a whistle next to my phone.

It's been quiet ever since."

Christine Cless-Wesle