It is now a very popular scam among scammers: there are regular reports of fake police officers who, under false pretenses, get seniors to give them money or valuables on the phone – which they then never see again. The perpetrators claim, for example, that burglaries are planned or have already been committed in the neighborhood, which is why the police now want to bring cash, gold or jewelry from the elderly who have been called to safety.
Getting to the perpetrators is often difficult. But now one of them, a 24-year-old from Freising, has had to answer at the Landshut district court for being part of a professional gang between October 2021 and February 2022 in the Erding and Ebersberg districts, among other places, relieving elderly people of a total of almost 200,000 euros to have. On Thursday he was sentenced to three years and four months in prison by the Fourth Trial Chamber, presided over by Judge Thomas Lindinger, on nine counts of gang and commercial fraud and arrogance and attempted fraud. The sentence was the result of an agreement between the court, the prosecutor and defense attorneys.
In the scam of the “fake police officers” it corresponds to the crime plan “that one or more perpetrators call the respective victim and pretend to be police officers or other officials. The calls are usually made from Turkey to older people. In the course of the conversation, then deliberately and untruthfully presented the injured party with an acute threat to their assets,” the indictment said. In addition to the alleged burglaries in the neighborhood mentioned above, bank employees who were allegedly involved in the crimes and cleared accounts were also put forward in the present case. In order to secure the money from them, the seniors should withdraw their money from the account and hand it over to the “police”.
“In Turkey, the callers sit next to the organizers, who are responsible for giving instructions to those who collect them. The task of the collectors is to take the cash and other valuables from the victims,” the prosecutor said in their indictment. Here, a driver and a pick-up person usually work as a team. “The pick-up person receives the go-ahead for pick-up from his logistician in Turkey via mobile phone contact before entering the property.”
The accused was not “the boss of the gang, but he was there,” said the presiding judge in his verdict. The 24-year-old “didn’t play a major role in the gang, which worked professionally and efficiently and with a high level of criminal energy, but it was a necessary one – the scam doesn’t work without someone picking you up”. In most cases, the defendant played this role. In the last one, “he then went up a notch,” according to the judge. The 24-year-old was then the one who took the loot from another collector and forwarded it to gang members who were higher up in organizational terms.
He made “wrong decisions” at the time
The previously unconvicted defendant stated in the trial that he had no money at the time and then made “wrong decisions”. It started when an employee of a Freising hairdressing salon asked him to accept 4,000 euros at a gas station as a favor for him. This is how the contact between the accused and the backers of the gang was established. Later, in further cases of fraud, the accused picked up the loot for a “fee” of 500 euros each. The gang was caught by an attentive taxi driver who was supposed to drive a victim to the bank to get money. That struck the taxi driver as odd, so he called the police.
In addition to deeds in Munich and Swabia, the gang also stole 14,000 euros from a fraud in Isen and 24,500 euros from a fraud in Vaterstetten. In the latter case, however, the case against the defendant was dropped because his contribution to the crime would not have had any bearing on his overall sentence. He also benefited from his extensive confession, which he made after a two-hour discussion between the parties involved in the process. The “deal” stipulated that the sentence would be no more than three years and eleven months and no less than two years and eleven months.
The two defense attorneys requested exactly these two years and eleven months, the prosecutor the upper sentence of three years and eleven months. The accused undertook to pay 5,000 euros to the state treasury as compensation. The money will be offset against the total damage of a good 197,000 euros, which according to the verdict should be confiscated from the accused.