Swiss couple scammed out of $402k by woman posing as their granddaughter
AFP March 26, 2013 3:56AM
An elderly couple have been scammed out of $402,000 after a woman called them pretending to be their granddaughter and claiming she needed money. Source: Supplied
AN ELDERLY Swiss couple has been swindled out of more than $400,000 by a woman pretending to be their granddaughter, in one of the largest such scams on record in the country, police said.
The couple, in their 70s, received a call in February from a woman posing as their granddaughter and claiming she was in financial difficulty, Zurich police said in a statement.
Over several weeks, the woman convinced the couple to hand over a total of 400,000 Swiss francs ($407,000) to a friend of hers, police said.
The couple did not realise they had been duped until mid-March, when they contacted their real granddaughter to ask why they hadn't heard back from her in a while, only to find out she had never asked them for any money.
The couple then reported the scam to the police who are now investigating the case.
"This is certainly the biggest such case on record in Zurich, and perhaps in Switzerland,'' Zurich police spokeswoman Judith Hoedl told AFP.
These types of grandparent scams or emergency scams - where someone posing as family pretends to be in desperate need of money to trick elderly people out of their savings - have long been a problem in the Swiss financial capital, Ms Hoedl said.
"There were more of these cases 10 years ago... The situation has improved some since we have tried to warn people of the danger,'' she said.
