The victim had contact for eight months
According to the investigators, the woman from Magdeburg had been in contact with her acquaintance via the internet for eight months. She also took out a loan to meet the cash demands. The police advise never to transfer money to strangers.
Scams are changing
Cheaters are increasingly moving their activities to the Internet. The nephew trick, for example, today is often done over the phone via messenger services. In Saxony-Anhalt, around 200 cases of fraud using messaging services were reported in the first quarter of 2022. The scam is always the same: an unknown number sends a message posing as a son or daughter with a broken cell phone. After a familiar sounding greeting that includes hearts and kisses emoticons, the scammers quickly get to work and finally want to snatch money from their victims with a supposed emergency. In September, a 53-year-old man from Burg lost several thousand euros to this scam.
But even with the “classic” nephew trick over the phone, the perpetrators still go on strike, as the recent incidents in southern Saxony-Anhalt have shown. In mid-October, 13 attempted pranks by grandchildren were reported by telephone to the Halle police station in just one day.
