Safe deposit boxes and other secure locations where they may have hidden money from the scams worth nearly 7.6 million euros that dozens of gang members committed recently have been revealed by police after months of investigation. Only a small amount of the stolen funds was found in the possession of those arrested, and even with their expensive lifestyles, exotic travels, purchases of luxury vehicles and homes, it appears that significant amounts of money are still missing. These funds remain unaccounted for and are now under police scrutiny.
The gymnastics champion
The interesting case within this particular unusual gang involves a gymnastics champion and her brother, a tennis coach. The woman, now 37 years old, had taken a leading role in the “Me too” movement, as she was one of the athletes who spoke openly about the sexual abuse she experienced. Shortly after, she appears to have become involved, in one way or another, with the Roma scammer gang. Having been a champion who competed in European Championships and Olympic Games at a younger age, the 37-year-old former athlete, police estimate, lived an expensive lifestyle that required substantial funding.
According to transcribed conversations recorded by the famous police “bug,” she appears to have had numerous discussions with her brother, the tennis coach, regarding schemes worth up to 100,000 euros. All within the framework of the Roma criminal gang’s activities. Her brother is also a person of interest, who was vacationing in a Latin American country during the surprise raids on suspects’ homes, allowing him to evade arrest for now, unlike his sister. He too is a lover of the good life, with luxury travels and expensive tastes. He is currently missing and has not revealed to anyone whether he is wrongly being sought or if he indeed has involvement with the network. In contrast, his sister denies everything, stating that she knew nothing about any schemes.
How the gang deceived elderly victims
This is not the first time police have raided Zevgolatio and Examilia to dismantle scammer gangs. The first investigation that led to arrests in these specific settlements was conducted by Agrinio Security, again for dismantling the first group of scammers who used phones to “fleece” their victims. Several more investigations by other police services followed, all reaching the same conclusion: “Access to these specific settlements is difficult. As soon as they see strangers moving toward the settlements, they immediately alert the others to destroy evidence and disappear through paths to avoid arrest. These are the most difficult areas to access without being detected.”
Additionally, another interesting element over the past 3-4 years is that other phone centers in the same area have been hit, yet the perpetrators continue. The reason is simple. They don’t need to use weapons, so they won’t be charged with felonies that would affect their final sentence in a potential trial. Everything is done through “Pakistani” connections which they change frequently, and now the new generation of Roma scammers has become initiated in new technology – they know what to look for, how to do it, and how to speak.
According to officers from the Burglary Department of the Organized Crime Unit, the Roma have gained a huge advantage over all other scammer groups operating in the country. They make money quickly and, most importantly, painlessly. This is reportedly the gang that pioneered the police officer trick. Specifically, a Roma group goes to a selected target house and starts banging on doors and windows, claiming to be burglars and threatening that if they don’t open up, they’ll break a window and kill everyone inside. Almost simultaneously, the house phone rings – a number the gang members had verified at another time – with a supposed police officer from the local station on the line.
The fake officer informs them that he knows the ruthless killers are at their house because they’re monitoring them with cameras, but they won’t be able to arrive at the scene in time. For this reason, as they mentioned in their phone calls, they pressured their victims to give them anything valuable to prevent them from entering and slaughtering them, as they had supposedly done to other families. The trick worked well, as did the accountant scam, where they call elderly people claiming to be their accountants, saying they lost their account and electronic login details and need them immediately because the refund and other beneficial citizen programs system closes within the next hour.
However, the majority of the gang’s scams involved conversations with supposed government service employees, such as HEDNO, DEI, and EYDAP. The callers would phone elderly people claiming that a serious leak of electricity, water, or gas had been detected. A characteristic case is the phone conversation a family in Attica had with a supposed HEDNO employee, which parapolitika.gr revealed last week. The way the fake employee spoke was the same used in other cases to convince victims that a repair crew was arriving outside their house, that they needed to let them in, and to avoid electrocution, they should remove any gold items from the house to a specific location after wrapping them in aluminum foil.
Phone scams: The gang’s two teams
Simply put, the gang was divided into two main groups: the callers and the operatives. The callers were based in the aforementioned areas of Corinthia. The operatives lived either in Corinthia or in the known settlements of West Attica. Behind the caller team, however, was another technical group that set up the phone centers and security systems or supplied gang members with “Pakistani numbers.” The interesting part of the investigation that hasn’t been revealed yet is where they obtained victims’ phone numbers and personal account information. In several cases, it was proven that the perpetrators had information from previous financial years. For example, for a family that had moved about 5 years ago, the perpetrators mentioned their previous address as personal details.
Therefore, police estimate, the Roma scammer members managed to purchase, obviously for large sums of money, lists containing Greek citizens’ data, which likely passed into the hands of several scammer gangs from this specific community. So far, the main suspects deny everything, as do their accomplices. All will appear before the Athens Investigator on Tuesday morning to face a series of felony and misdemeanor charges.
