The public prosecutor's office and criminal police in Frankfurt arrested seven suspects on Wednesday in Hesse and other federal states who, as members of a gang, are said to have deprived a number of senior citizens of their assets with the false police trick.

For some acts with this scam, a variant of the so-called grandchildren's trick, it is said to have stopped at the attempt.

Anna-Sophia Lang

Editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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    According to a statement from the public prosecutor's office, the acts are said to have been committed between February and August 2020.

    The accused are said to have made repeated phone calls for hours or even days to the seniors, who were between 71 and 88 years old, that they were about to break in and that they would lose all of their assets.

    You would therefore have to bring money and valuables to safety by depositing them in an agreed location.

    According to the public prosecutor's office, the accused pretended to be police officers and used technically generated telephone numbers from real authorities.

    Prevents loss of wealth

    In this way, the accused persuaded the seniors in seven cases to hand over gold, jewelry or cash totaling more than 715,000 euros to the so-called “collectors” or to deposit them in front of their home. The investigators found about half of them in the immediate vicinity of the crime scene. In four other cases it was possible to intervene in good time and thereby prevent a loss of assets of around 100,000 euros.

    Since the end of April 2018, the investigations have been directed against 18 men and women, most of whom live in Germany and are between 23 and 65 years old. Other, unidentified people who are supposed to operate from Turkey are also suspected. The investigators searched 16 apartments and business premises in Hesse, North Rhine-Westphalia, Bavaria, Hamburg and Berlin on Wednesday. 120 police officers, special forces and officials from two state criminal investigation offices secured numerous pieces of evidence, in particular documents, computers, data carriers and cash, with the help of a cash sniffer dog. The arrested seven suspects will be brought before the responsible judge on Wednesday.