{"id":15136,"date":"2026-04-27T19:42:07","date_gmt":"2026-04-27T19:42:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/in-greece.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/27\/phone-scammer-walks-off-with-e20000\/"},"modified":"2026-04-27T19:42:07","modified_gmt":"2026-04-27T19:42:07","slug":"phone-scammer-walks-off-with-e20000","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/in-greece.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/27\/phone-scammer-walks-off-with-e20000\/","title":{"rendered":"Phone scammer walks off with \u20ac20,000"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div id=\"post-1302114\">\n    <!-- .entry-header --><\/p>\n<div class=\"first-img article_thumbnail_wrapper\" itemscope=\"\" itemprop=\"associatedMedia\" itemtype=\"http:\/\/schema.org\/ImageObject\">\n                                                                    <picture><source media=\"(max-width: 767px)\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.ekathimerini.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/police-2-320x200.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"960\" height=\"600\" class=\"picture-main-block-image\" data-nxsrc=\"https:\/\/www.ekathimerini.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/police-2.jpg\" alt=\"Phone scammer walks off with \u20ac20,000\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ekathimerini.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/police-2-960x600.jpg\"\/><br \/>\n                        <\/source><\/picture>\n<p>File photo. <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div class=\"entry-content\" itemprop=\"articleBody\">\n<p>A fake power company employee has talked an 85-year-old woman in northern Greece into handing him \u20ac20,000 in cash that she kept at home using a common but highly effective scam, police said Monday.<\/p>\n<p>The 38-year-old man has been identified and charged with fraud over the incident last month in a village near the town of Ptolemaida, according to a police statement.<\/p>\n<p>It said he belonged to a gang of scammers who phoned the elderly woman, told her she had a wiring problem and should put any cash kept at home outdoors in a pillow case to prevent it being damaged. When the 85-year-old was otherwise occupied, the suspect allegedly grabbed the money and left.<\/p>\n<p>Such phone scams that target vulnerable people at home have become a major source of revenue for criminal groups, despite repeated public awareness campaigns and a string of arrests all over Greece.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><!-- .entry-content --><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><script>\n        var NXFBPixelFunc = function () {\n            document.removeEventListener(\"scroll\", NXFBPixelFunc);\n            setTimeout(function () {\n                !function (f, b, e, v, n, t, s) {\n                    if (f.fbq) return;\n                    n = f.fbq = function () {\n                        n.callMethod ?\n                            n.callMethod.apply(n, arguments) : n.queue.push(arguments)\n                    };\n                    if (!f._fbq) f._fbq = n;\n                    n.push = n;\n                    n.loaded = !0;\n                    n.version = '2.0';\n                    n.queue = [];\n                    t = b.createElement(e);\n                    t.async = !0;\n                    t.src = v;\n                    s = b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];\n                    s.parentNode.insertBefore(t, s)\n                }(window, document, 'script',\n                    'https:\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/fbevents.js');\n                fbq('init', '109138906120213');\n                fbq('track', 'PageView');\n            }, 0)\n        };\n        document.addEventListener(\"scroll\", NXFBPixelFunc);\n    <\/script><br \/>\n<br \/><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ekathimerini.com\/news\/1302114\/phone-scammer-walks-off-with-e20000\/\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>File photo. A fake power company employee has talked an 85-year-old woman in northern Greece into handing him \u20ac20,000 in cash that she kept at home using a common but highly effective scam, police said Monday. The 38-year-old man has been identified and charged with fraud over the incident last month in a village near &#8230; <\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more-container\"><a title=\"Phone scammer walks off with \u20ac20,000\" class=\"read-more button\" href=\"https:\/\/in-greece.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/27\/phone-scammer-walks-off-with-e20000\/#more-15136\" aria-label=\"Read more about Phone scammer walks off with \u20ac20,000\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15137,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":0,"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.ekathimerini.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/police-2-960x600.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","no-featured-image-padding"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/in-greece.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/in-greece.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/in-greece.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in-greece.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in-greece.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15136"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/in-greece.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15136\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in-greece.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/in-greece.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in-greece.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in-greece.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}