File photo.
A 22-year-old man has been sent to prison for four years after a Thessaloniki court convicted him of stealing €100,000 in cash from an elderly woman who had buried it in her garden for safekeeping, state ERT television said Monday.
The man was arrested last week for defrauding the 76-year-old woman out of the money, which amounted to her lifetime savings. Police are trying to identify a second man believed to be involved in the phone scam in a village near Thessaloniki.
The court did not allow the defendant to walk free pending hearing of his appeal.
Similar cases have become common as criminals shift away from violent home invasions to lower-risk fraud that also carries lower penalties. Despite repeated police public awareness campaigns, the practice remains highly effective, mostly with elderly or otherwise vulnerable people.
The woman’s troubles began with a phone call, ostensibly from an accountant’s office, that claimed she owed money to the tax authorities. The scammer gradually gained her confidence, to the point that when he asked whether she had cash or valuables at home – maintaining that they would need to be declared for tax purposes – she confided in him about the garden hoard.
Police said the man asked her to unearth it, claiming that he would send a drone to record it, and then kept her on the phone long enough for an associate to enter the garden and remove the cash once the woman had returned indoors.