Moscow pensioner gives over $260,000 to telephone fraudsters

In Moscow, a 78-year-old pensioner handed 25 million rubles (over $260,000) to telephone scammers. The police managed to find and detain an accomplice of the criminals, the press service of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs said.

Perpetrators misled an elderly woman and instructed her to go to her bank and withdraw savings in foreign currency from her account. 

The perpetrators called the victim, introduced themselves as police officers and said that in order to protect her husband’s savings, she would need to withdraw all the money from his account and then transfer it to an 'authorised person.'

The pensioner handed over the money to a woman who acted in concert with the fraudsters.

When the pensioner realised that she had been deceived, she contacted law enforcement agencies with a statement of fraud. Criminal investigation officers quickly identified the suspect. She was detained at the railway station in Rostov-on-Don. The 58-year-old woman became a defendant in a fraud case. She was placed under house arrest with court approval.

Investigators work to identify her accomplices.