Call fraud: The Munich criminal police are using unusual methods to intensify their fight against crime organized in call centers. Warnings on hundreds of thousands of baker’s bags are intended to raise awareness of the unscrupulous methods of the telephone mafia. For a 76-year-old from the Munich district of Milbertshofen, however, the current prevention campaign comes too late: on Tuesday, after a perfidious shock call, she handed over gold worth around 150,000 euros to an unknown collector who pretended to be an employee of the traffic police.
An almost typical case, as Désirée Schelshorn says, the deputy head of the “Phenomena” working group at the Munich police headquarters. The hunters of the telephone fraud mafia have recently achieved numerous successful searches – in Munich as well as in Turkey. The well-known “grandchild trick” no longer plays a role, at least in Munich, and the scam with the fake police officers who warn of an alleged risk of burglary is also less and less effective.
Old acquaintances with a new stitch
On the other hand, the numbers are increasing rapidly for a relatively new method of fraud: the so-called shock calls. For Schelshorn and her colleagues, old acquaintances are behind it – the same extended families operating from Poland who, years ago, had expanded the grandchildren’s trick into a flourishing crime franchise.
Many victims of the call center mafia fare like the 76-year-old from Milbertshofen. An alleged police officer answers the phone – on Tuesday he pretended to be an officer of the Munich traffic police – and tells of a terrible, often fatal accident that a daughter, grandson or another close relative is said to have caused.
This first shock is quickly followed by the second. Another male or female “boar,” as Schelshorn calls the psychologically highly trained callers, most of whom speak German without an accent, can be heard: a cracking voice, sobbing, uninhibited crying. Even an experienced investigator like Désirée Schelshorn still gets goosebumps when she hears recordings of such telephone calls. “It’s totally authentic,” she says. The perpetrators caused fear and terror.
The tale of bail
This is then used by the next scammer, an alleged public prosecutor or court clerk. He offers to let his daughter go free – for a ridiculous amount of bail, of course. Put under such pressure, the Milbertshofen senior revealed that she had gold in a safe deposit box. She should fetch it and hand it over to a messenger. This happened around 3 p.m. in the Moosacher, Norderneyer and Preußenstrasse area. The pickup is described as a young man with shorts and a big belly. Sometimes, says Schelshorn, the victims are even directed to a courthouse — and in front of that they are watched over by an alleged employee.
Somewhere in Warsaw or Kraków, Wroclaw or Poznań, a phone rip-off takes another bite of his breakfast roll before dialing the number of a woman or man whose first name in the Munich phone book suggests a higher age. “Hello, this is Müller from the traffic police. We have unpleasant news for you…”. What you can do about it is written on the pastry bags that the bakers’ guild issues in the Munich area. The most important tip: hang up. Hang up immediately.