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Basel / Freiburg (dpa / lsw) - Fraudsters put a pensioner in Basel under pressure as a fake police officer and stole the equivalent of a quarter of a million euros.
They lured the woman, among other things, across the German-Swiss border to Freiburg, as the public prosecutor of Basel-Stadt reported on Thursday.
Initially, there was no trace of the perpetrators.
A caller had pretended to be a criminal investigator and scared her by saying that the police had discovered her address on recently arrested burglars, it said.
The woman received further calls for days.
She was pressured to buy gold bars for her money and to hand them over to alleged police officers as well as cash and jewelry for safekeeping.
Among other things, the callers lured the woman to Freiburg, a good 70 kilometers away, and persuaded her to deposit the money there under a parked car.
The woman was intimidated by saying that she was under constant surveillance and that she was not allowed to talk to anyone about the matter.
According to the public prosecutor's office, the perpetrators ultimately captured 270,000 francs, the equivalent of around a quarter of a million euros.
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"Should someone pretend to be a police officer or a detective and ask them to withdraw money from a bank or a financial institution and hand it over to civilian officials for security reasons, inform the police immediately," said the public prosecutor.
Notice from the public prosecutor