Bolzano – An unexpected phone call, a confident voice on the other end: "We're the Postal Police, your account has been hacked." This is the beginning of a scam that convinced two residents of the Racines Valley to hastily transfer their savings, totaling €5.500, to supposedly "protected" accounts.
Only the timely intervention of the Carabinieri of the Racines station made it possible to trace the alleged fraudsters: four people reported at large, all with previous convictions for similar crimes.
The psychological trap
A 51-year-old and a 45-year-old man fell for the scam. The fake agents, using technical language and an authoritative tone, exploited the victim's urgency: they claimed that the victims' accounts had been targeted by hackers and the only way to secure their money was to immediately transfer funds to accounts "dedicated to verification."
Victims of shock and pressure, the two made multiple transfers, both to Italian and foreign recipients.
The turning point: the complaint and the investigations
Alarm bells were raised by further suspicious requests, arriving after the operation had already begun. At that point, the victims contacted the Carabinieri. The officers analyzed telephone numbers and bank transactions, managing to trace the owners of the numbers used for the fraudulent calls and the holders of the credit accounts.
Profiles of the alleged scammers
The investigation led to the identification of four individuals, residing in Campania, Lazio, and Emilia-Romagna, already known to law enforcement for telephone fraud. Their modus operandi mirrors patterns already widespread nationwide: phone numbers registered to front men and bank accounts opened specifically to move the illicitly stolen funds.
The warning from the police
The Carabinieri take this opportunity to reiterate a now-necessary warning: no police force will ever request money, access codes, or sensitive banking information over the phone. In the event of suspicious calls that create urgency or pressure, they are urged not to provide any information, to cut off the call, and to immediately contact 112. Mistrust, in these cases, is the first line of defense.
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Comments (1)
Reading this article, I thought it was strange how people could believe scammers. They should be more careful and not trust them so easily. The safety of their money is important, and they need to be better informed.