How to protect yourself – Telephone fraud is booming: victims lose millions – News

Dozens of seniors are still falling victim to phone scammers. In the canton of Zurich, crooks have already stolen over 2.4 million francs this year. The police give tips on how to protect yourself.

In the canton of Zurich alone, the crooks try it dozens of times a day. They specifically call older people and try to get money with a fraudulent story. The Zurich police counted over 2,500 fraud attempts on the phone last year, and in 59 successful cases, senior citizens were cheated out of almost CHF 2.4 million.

The figures from other cantons also show that scams on the phone are still booming. The canton of St. Gallen, for example, has already counted over 200 cases this year in which telephone scammers tried to get hold of senior citizens’ money. In Aargau there are already over 430 cases. And in the canton of Zurich, the amount of damage in 2022, at a good CHF 2.4 million, is already higher than in all of last year.

In order to get the victim’s money, scammers use two main scams:

• The fake cop (spoofing): The caller claims that a criminal has been arrested in the neighborhood. A list of possible burglary targets was secured. And of course the name and address of the victim also appear on this list. The bogus policeman claims that valuables, cash and possibly even the money in the account are no longer safe. The senior citizen is therefore instructed to hand everything over to the wrong police officer.
• The grandchild scam: The caller poses as a family member and claims to be in financial distress. He communicates skilfully and elicits a lot of information from the family from the victim, which he later incorporates into the conversation. In this way, he manipulates the senior citizen into agreeing to help him out of financial distress with large sums of money. He pretends to be helpful, but also puts the victim under pressure. The transfer is usually made to a «trustworthy friend».

The telephone scam is a well-known but still successful scam. Police believe the number may actually be higher. The cantonal police in Zurich calculate that over 12,000 fraud attempts took place last year. The number of victims and the amount of damage are likely to be around five times higher than reported.

High number of unreported cases due to feelings of shame

The high number of unreported cases probably has two reasons, says Florian Schneider from the St. Gallen canton police. “Those who don’t fall for the scam say to themselves: nothing happened.” And the victims would not go to the police out of shame. But Rolf Decker from the prevention department of the Zurich canton police also notes: “The fraudsters are extremely professional, extremely communicative and they have an answer to every question that is very credible.” No victim needs to be ashamed of that.

It is important to report to the police in any case, to show the right behavior when attempting fraud and to correctly interpret certain alarm signals. The police therefore recommend the following measures and behavior:

The scam of telephone fraud will not disappear completely in the next few years, but the risk of becoming a victim of con artists can be massively reduced with the measures, according to the crime experts. The police are also currently employing fake computer supporters. In the canton of Berne alone, 73 such attempts at telephone fraud were registered last year, with damage totaling CHF 324,000.