Scams without borders – Trento Police Headquarters

Scam attempts have continued in recent weeks onlineoften carried out through requests for money necessary to support elusive life-saving treatments.

However, the last one, in chronological order, had an unexpected target: the Trento Police Headquarters. In fact, the user “Charlotte Petra” published a comment on a post from the city police headquarters.

Below is the comment in question in its full version: “Hi, I’m sorry to contact you that way. I just saw your profile and I think you are the right person for me. Anyway, my name is Charlotte Gudrun Petra, I am a German-born woman and I live in Portugal. I have a serious illness, throat cancer which condemns me to certain death, and in total I have 800,000 euros, which I would like to pass on to a reliable and honest person. I have a company that imports red olive oil to Portugal and 6 years ago I lost my husband, I experienced it a lot and I can’t get married to this day, we have no children. I want to donate this amount before I die so that my days are numbered because of this disease for which I can’t find a cure, but a calming company in Portugal doesn’t want to know if you can use this donation. This is my email address: [email protected]”.

However, there was no interaction – on the part of the Police Headquarters staff – which was necessary for this type of scam to be successful. This is in fact the method that is used in these cases: an attractive sum of money, accompanied by a touching story, is made available to the unaware user, upon making an immediate bank transfer so that this sum – allegedly “blocked”, as in this case – can be transferred to the citizen unaware of the scam.

Citizens are therefore invited to pay attention to any sudden requests for money from entities, strangers, as well as those from imaginary children who complain about the loss of their mobile phone and request – through a telephone number other than their own – money for sudden medical treatments, promptly reporting any suspicious operation to the police.