A teacher living in Cagliari who had posted an ad to rent an apartment in the city center on an online portal fell into the trap of the 'ATM scam'. Hers is the second case reported in Sardinia in the last 15 days.
The owner, a 41-year-old widow from Lanusei (Nuoro), filed a complaint on July 13: a man responded to her ad, saying he was ready to pay her the 720 euros requested as the first monthly fee. In fact, the stranger invited her to go to the ATM to verify that she had received the credit.
The woman complied with the request and followed the telephone instructions that the potential tenant gave her in front of the ATM keyboard. Once the operations were completed, the teacher asked for a bank statement that revealed the Fraud: instead of collecting the 720 euros, she had lost them, after having transferred them to the stranger's account. But when the woman tried to call him, the man had already disappeared.
The Carabinieri managed to trace the scammer, a 24-year-old from Naples, even though the phone line was registered to a thirty-year-old Egyptian, who was the owner, probably without his knowledge, of several hundred SIM cards. About a fortnight ago, five Italians living in Chieti, Matera, Foggia and Varese were reported for a similar scam, who had pretended to rent a holiday home in San Teodoro, Sardinia and had managed to pocket 2.400 euros from the owner.
The victim is a 51-year-old from Nuoro, who had posted an online ad, to which one of the accused had responded. In this case too, the stranger had proposed paying a deposit and asked the woman to go to the ATM under the pretext of receiving a quick money order. In reality, the instructions received had only served to make five top-ups on the cards of as many scammers. The Carabinieri had managed to identify them thanks to the collaboration of the banks.
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