Fearing a ‘Romanian gang’, a 73-year-old woman from Lower Austria entrusted her extremely expensive jewelry to a fake police officer. The 19-year-old Viennese handed over the suitcase to his clients. They probably brought the record amount of loot to Turkey. The person who picked up the car faces a prison sentence of up to ten years in the Vienna Landl.
‘She brought the suitcase to the door. My client did not know what was in it and how much it was worth,” says lawyer Zaid Rauf in the depressing trial against a criminal organization that robs the elderly of their belongings. ‘Can you expect to throw two million euros at the feet of a stranger? Of course not,” he adds. His client, a 19-year-old Austrian, is training to become a car mechanic in Vienna.
To finance drug use
No longer able to afford the drugs he was addicted to, he made the ‘big mistake’ and got involved with criminals. Those who collected the goods were promised a small percentage of the loot: “I pretended to be a police officer, took the suitcase and handed it over to the customer,” admits the young man, who immediately revealed everything he knew during his interrogation .
Unfortunately, that is not very much, because in the mass fraud model the student is, according to Rauf, ‘the smallest cog of them all’. The crime bosses are based in Izmir, Turkey, where victims are professionally ‘sandwiched’ from a call centre. According to the public prosecutor, “enormous psychological pressure is being exerted” on those affected.
The jewelry was of enormous value
This also applies to Mrs. H. from Lower Austria. She is convinced that she could become a victim of a Romanian gang. Therefore, she has to hand over her belongings to the police for security reasons. The jewelry that the frightened pensioner handed over in a suitcase to the car apprentice, who posed as Inspector Sebastian Wimmer, was worth two million euros. He and four other collectors are accused in the lawsuit.
Judgments pending.
Source: Krone
I am Wallace Jones, an experienced journalist. I specialize in writing for the world section of Today Times Live. With over a decade of experience, I have developed an eye for detail when it comes to reporting on local and global stories. My passion lies in uncovering the truth through my investigative skills and creating thought-provoking content that resonates with readers worldwide.
